Ambarella Brings Generative AI Capabilities to Edge Devices; Introduces N1 System-on-Chip Series for On-Premise Applications

Single SoC Supports One to 34 Billion-Parameter, Multi-Modal LLMs With Low Power Consumption, Enabling Generative AI for Edge Endpoint Devices

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 08, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ambarella, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMBA), an edge AI semiconductor company, today announced during CES that it is demonstrating multi-modal large language models (LLMs) running on its new N1 SoC series at a fraction of the power-per-inference of leading GPU solutions. Ambarella aims to bring generative AI—a transformative technology that first appeared in servers due to the large processing power required—to edge endpoint devices and on-premise hardware, across a wide range of applications such as video security analysis, robotics and a multitude of industrial applications.

Ambarella will initially be offering optimized generative AI processing capabilities on its mid to high-end SoCs, from the existing CV72 for on-device performance under 5W, through to the new N1 series for server-grade performance under 50W. Compared to GPUs and other AI accelerators, Ambarella provides complete SoC solutions that are up to 3x more power-efficient per generated token, while enabling immediate and cost-effective deployment in products.

“Generative AI networks are enabling new functions across our target application markets that were just not possible before,” said Les Kohn, CTO and co-founder of Ambarella. “All edge devices are about to get a lot smarter, with our N1 series of SoCs enabling world-class multi-modal LLM processing in a very attractive power/price envelope.”

“Virtually every edge application will get enhanced by generative AI in the next 18 months,” said Alexander Harrowell, Principal Analyst, Advanced Computing at Omdia. “When moving genAI workloads to the edge, the game becomes all about performance per watt and integration with the rest of the edge ecosystem, not just raw throughput.”

All of Ambarella’s AI SoCs are supported by the company’s new Cooper Developer Platform. Additionally, in order to reduce customers’ time-to-market, Ambarella has pre-ported and optimized popular LLMs, such as Llama-2, as well as the Large Language and Video Assistant (LLava) model running on N1 for multi-modal vision analysis of up to 32 camera sources. These pre-trained and fine-tuned models will be available for partners to download from the Cooper Model Garden.