Ren Wu’s blog Archives

Edge AI and Vision Alliance

January 28, 2020January 28, 2020Novumind

For years we have been pleased to be members of the Embedded Vision Alliance, an industry association that has promoted computer vision technology and helped companies like NovuMind gain market visibility and valuable industry partnerships. Today it was announced that Embedded Vision Alliance is changing its name to Edge AI and Vision Alliance. This recognizes the broader role played by AI technology beyond visual applications. Edge AI can process data from a variety of sensors: image, sound, vibration, radar, lidar, and the like. We’d like to congratulate our friends at Edge AI and Vision Alliance on their expanded scope and the great job they are doing for our industry. For more, go to: www.edge-ai-vision.com

Ren Wu’s blog

Ongoing Evolution of AI

January 3, 2019January 3, 2019Novumind

The holidays are a time to reflect on the past year and think about what lies ahead in the new year. In 2018, AI continued to get a lot of attention in the public eye. There was the usual hype, but there was also good media coverage of the industry’s challenges and progress. It is always good to remind ourselves that AI, like other technologies, evolves continuously. Hard-working researchers and innovators will continue to advance the state of the art, but the advancements tend to result in evolutionary – not revolutionary – change. It seemed like there was less “rise of the robots” or “the Singularity is near” hype in the past year. Perhaps there is more understanding of the complexities of AI, and an appreciation that the dream of “artificial general intelligence” is extremely distant. Perhaps some of the visible setbacks in autonomous vehicle projects helped illustrate the complexities of AI. On the bright side, we have continued to see growth in a broad range of useful AI applications. If you missed the report from McKinsey Global Institute this past year that cataloged AI use cases across 19 industries, I highly recommend that you read it. This paper covered…More DetailsOngoing Evolution of AI

Ren Wu’s blog

Disrupting the Giants

October 19, 2018October 19, 2018Novumind

As we get close to launching our first chip, one of the most frequent questions I get asked is, “How will you guys compete against other AI chips, including those from giant companies like Intel and Nvidia?” It’s a question I love, because it leads to some great discussions around computing architectures, chip design, and how AI will be deployed to improve peoples’ lives. These can all be lengthy discussions, but for this post let me just focus on some of the design considerations that have led NovuMind to a unique, disruptive approach. We are just at the beginning of an AI revolution, brought about by Deep Neural Networks. As this revolution unfolds, it is not surprising that there are many design approaches, building on existing technologies. The processing units that power most of today’s DNN solutions are CPUs, GPUs, and DSPs. These are all derivatives of the von Neumann model, based on the concept of executing a computer instruction set, able to execute loops, subroutines, arithmetic functions, and so on. But DNNs are forcing us to think about processor architectures in new ways. DNNs are not organized around the traditional instruction set model. They are more about interconnected layers…More DetailsDisrupting the Giants

Ren Wu’s blog

Being a Full-Stack Company

July 23, 2018July 23, 2018NovuMind

Every technology startup faces the question of whether to focus on a core technology piece vs. a full-stack solution. NovuMind is bringing a full-stack AI solution set to our customers. We’re in a period where AI is suddenly a top priority for every industry. It’s an exciting time. But unless your company is a Facebook or Google, with in-house AI expertise, how will you seize the new opportunities brought by AI? How will you keep up with your competition, who may be embedding the powers of perception and decision-making into their upcoming products? We will be happy to sell you our NovuTensor chip for these applications. But we know that you probably need more from us than just the chip. You are looking for a complete solution. This is the essence of “whole product” strategy that the Silicon Valley marketing guru Bill Davidow made famous. When he was at Intel, this meant providing more than just the microprocessor. Customers needed development tools, training, and an ecosystem of supporting technology. Years later, NVIDIA followed a similar strategy, building out the CUDA ecosystem to accelerate GPU adoption. Making AI easy to use is part of our vision. We want to empower all…More DetailsBeing a Full-Stack Company

Ren Wu’s blog

The NovuMind Vision

June 23, 2018July 23, 2018Novumind

Welcome to our website and thank you for your interest in NovuMind. We have been busy the last couple of years assembling one of the world’s best teams in AI and creating a set of enabling technologies that we think will change the world. In this blog, I hope to share with you my excitement about what we’re doing and some of my perspectives about the industry. I’ll be adding posts every few weeks and I’ll be eager to hear your feedback. I have worked on artificial intelligence for many years, but I must say that right now is a particularly exciting time for the AI industry. This is due to multiple converging forces. The smartphone and the proliferation of other “connected things” are generating vast amounts of data. At the same time, deep neural networks are being developed that are capable of being trained with this data to perform all sorts of perception and automation tasks. Heterogeneous computing, i.e. the use of different computing architectures to address specific functions, has powered many of the advances in deep neural networks. Consider the success of Nvidia, whose GPUs have been adopted for many applications beyond graphics processing. The ability of machines…More DetailsThe NovuMind Vision