Hardware Pioneers 2022: Edge AI and Connectivity with Synaptics

Synaptics is a name everyone in computing knows. Alongside inventing the laptop touchpad, they pioneered the capacitive touch inputs found on iPods and most mobile phones.

In recent years, Synaptics has expanded its focus, moving into WiFi, Bluetooth, and GNSS hardware, along with video and audio for modern smart devices. At Hardware Pioneers 2022, we chatted with David Armour about what hardware they'd brought along and how Synaptics has changed over the years.

Alongside futureproof connected hardware, another part of the Synaptics booth caught our eye. Luckily David was more than happy to take us through their low-power Katana EdgeAI camera development board.

Katana looks very powerful, and it's something we'd love to get our hands on to try out. It's also supported by Edge Impulse, making no-code model training a pretty easy thing to achieve!

EdgeAI is an ever-expanding field pushed by increasing demand for low-power, high-compute devices that can act locally without centralizing possibly sensitive data. Synaptics had some really interesting things on show, and with their rich history of perfecting new technologies, they are definitely worth watching.

You can find more information about the Katana platform via this Synaptics blog post, and their connected hardware ecosystem on the official website.