[introduction]

On July 21, Nationalchip held an online conference with the theme of "smart wear, starting from" core ", and solemnly launched the ultra-low power AIoT chip gx8002, which can be applied to smart wearable devices such as TWS earphones.

Over the past three years, Nationalchip has made good achievements in the fields of Smart home, smart car, etc. What kind of works will Nationalchip bring this time with its continuous improvement in AI voice？

With the development of artificial intelligence technology, AI voice penetration rate is higher and higher, from intelligent speakers to voice appliances, to intelligent car, AI has been everywhere.

In 2016, AirPods was born, and TWS + AI has become the general trend of the market. From the "player by the ear" to the "assistant by the ear" ，earphone has evolved into an important imported producs.

(TWS products supporting voice wake-up, such as Airpods 2, Xiaomi Air 2S, vivo TWS NEO)

However, wearable products such as TWS earphones, smart watches and bracelets are limited by their small size and limited battery capacity, so their battery life is often difficult to meet the needs of users.

And, voice wake-up, which is always on-line, will greatly increase the power consumption. It is difficult for various chips to achieve a balance between power consumption and performance.

Now, the AIoT chip GX8002 released by Nationalchip is charged with the mission of making wearable devices more intelligent. It has achieved a technological breakthrough in AI wake-up in ultra-low power consumption scenarios, achieving a real "always on" voice wake-up without pressure.

Unveiling the true face of Lushan

(GX8002 system structure diagram)

GX8002 adopts MCU + NPU architecture and integrates gxNPU V200 and Pingtouge CK804 processor.

The chip supports multi-level wake-up and integrates hardware VAD, which can realize ultra-low power standby and automatic voice induction. Through the powerful ability of NPU, many functions such as voice wake-up, command recognition, AI noise reduction and voiceprint recognition are realized.

01

This is probably the lowest power consumption AI chip in the industry

It's really Super Super Super low power consumption！

After testing, the power consumption of the whole chip GX8002 is only 70μW when VAD is standby, and 0.6 mW when running.

At the same time, GX8002 can automatically switch VAD standby mode and work mode according to whether users speak or not. Therefore, through the effective VAD filtering, the average power consumption of the chip in daily use is basically less than 300μW.

There are two major technological breakthroughs behind the ultra-low power consumption of GX8002: self-developed neural network processor gxNPU V200 and self-developed hardware VAD.

gxNPU V200 is the second generation of Nationalchip neural network processor, which is specially designed for low power consumption optimization, and its calculation energy efficiency is more than 10 times that of ordinary DSP chip. It supports various models such as DNN / CNN / RNN, automatically realizes network quantization compression, and can directly connect with Tensorflow and other training platforms.

(gxnpu structure diagram)

At the same time, Nationalchip has designed a new VAD module, which can judge the voice by adding more characteristic analysis. In the actual test of office, subway, road, coffee shop and other occasions, the ratio of VAD standby by GX8002 is more than 70% on average.

That is to say, more than 70% of the time in 70uw VAD standby mode!

02

ultra high integration, even crystal oscillator is integrated this time

In order to make the volume of wake-up part as small as possible in wearable solution, Nationalchip integrated all the components needed for wake-up in the chip, including audio ADC, Flash, power LDO, and even crystal oscillator!

That is to say, when the product uses GX8002, there is almost no need for external devices, only one chip can complete the whole process of voice wake-up, occupying a very small area of PCB.

At the same time, in the packaging design, GX8002 adopts 3D packaging technology, stacking Flash inside the chip. The first package is QFN20, 3mmx3mm, which is very easy to generate and use.

In Q3, Nationalchip will launch a smaller WLCSP package with a size of 1.4mmx2.4mm, which can meet the demand of more precise products.

03

super high cost performance, the price is really low!

In order to better enable AI for wearable products, Nationalchip has not only completed the breakthrough of ultra-low power consumption, but also reduced the cost to the extreme. The starting price of US $0.65 was announced on the spot, so that AI is no longer expensive and has a real super high cost performance ratio.

At the same time, Nationalchip integrates rich resources, including basic technologies and algorithm solutions required by various TWS and wearable products, connects mobile phone assistants and cloud platforms of major brands, opens up the cooperation channel of bluetooth main chip, outputs complete and reliable "one-stop service", reduces AI service threshold, and greatly shortens the R&D cycle of customers.

At the same time, the external wake-up scheme can add a voice button on the basis of the customer's original mature products, so that the customer's original software and design can be reused, so that the AI R&D cycle becomes very controllable, and the tangible and intangible costs are greatly reduced.

Smart wear, set sail from the "core"

It can be said that GX8002 is "born out of the ordinary". It integrates many technologies, such as voice wake-up, audio signal processing, NPU heterogeneous computing, VAD technology and crystal less design, which is the embodiment of Nationalchip's years of experience in the field of AIoT chips and audio and video.

Ultra low power consumption, more than a day's work, is the result of the efforts of all Nationalchip's members day and night.

Ultra low power consumption, ultra-small size, ultra-high cost performance make AI technology into smart wear no longer far away. Many applications that could not be done or even be thought in the past would have new possibilities.

TWS earphone will be integrated with your AI voice assistant. Smart glasses will finally have a better control interface. Smart watch can quickly call out the functions you want, and more applications will have opportunities to be discovered.

Voice assistant, which is always online, will push wearable devices into a new intelligent era.

With the AI power blessing of GX8002, this imagination is not far away. AI intelligent assistant with long-term standby only needs to wear a portable mobile device. Isn't it cool to think about it？