GrAI Matter Labs VIP Is a Very Important Processor

At the recent Embedded World conference, a robotic arm caught our eye. It was using computer vision to selectively squash only one type of tomato - and doing it at speed.

The setup was powered by a System on Chip (SoC) from GrAI Matter Labs called the VIP. According to GrAI Matter VIP is "The world’s first sparsity-native AI System-on-Chip (SoC)... optimized for ultra-low latency and low power processing at the endpoint to enable Life-Ready AI." 

It runs on a principle I'd not heard of before - NeuronFlow. The concept uses sparsity - the idea that in real-life scenarios human brains don't monitor every single thing happening at any given moment. It's an interesting concept and one that is also showing up in the newest computer vision sensors too.

We chatted with Christian from GrAI Matter about their SoC, the demo, and how they are helping to introduce AI programming to students and teachers alike through their free course materials.

Another phrase used by GrAI Matter when referring to the VIP is a "Full stack AI System on Chip platform" which gives a good indication that they are hoping it'll get widespread adoption as the go-to AI solution.

More information about the SoC, along with the accompanying whitepaper about NeuronFlow is available from the GrAI Matter Labs site. The teaching materials mentioned in the video are currently not available, but we'll update this article with a link to them when we receive them!