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LG launched phone powered by Gyrfalcon AI chip

by on18 October 2019


Updated: One big customer with LG Q70

Gyrfalcon Technology Inc. (GTI) is one of the hot names in AI startups, and the company managed to score a big customer for its AI chip.

The chip such as Lightspeeur 2801 uses only 300mW while providing 2.8 TOPS of performance, and companies such as LG have recognized the potential. The actual chip that LG Q70 uses is Lightspeeur 5801S neural accelerator capable of 12.6 TOPS/W with 2.8 TOPs peak performance at 200 MHz and 224 mW. This is a 28nm processor using APiM neural network core and inference time less than 4ms. The product features USB 3.0 and clock speeds of 50 to 200 MHz. Lets also mention that it is 6mm x 6mm. The chip accelerates CNN (Convolutional Neural Networks), and doesn't great with Natural Language Processing, object detection, image classification, speech recognition and other applications. The LG Q70 phone is 6.4 inch phone powered by Snapdragon 675 and 4GB RAM. The phone is launched in South Korea and it just launched in India too. The Lightspeeur 5891S can help Snapdragon 675 in AI related tasks and still keep the phone cost at the desirable level. 

GTI scores LG phone

LG is jumping on board the big edge computing discussion and teamed up with Gyrfalcon to launch a phone powered by the company’s AI. The unnamed phone last launched a month ago, and LG is planning to use GTI's AI chip to achieve high-performance AI-enabled experiences to end-users, including real-time video Bokeh effects, low-light enhancement, super-resolution, and more. We will do our best to find out the model as that will paint a more interesting picture.

“We were careful when selecting the AI technology provider for our new LG smartphone, said Kyuchan Roh, Vice President of LG Electronics. “GTI’s technology brings the high performance combined with very low energy use, packaged in a small size and at a low cost that will enable
us to provide unsurpassed AI mobile phone experiences.”

“As demand for the capabilities edge AI smartphones can deliver grows rapidly, we provide superior, power-efficient, and cost-effective technologies enabling devices makers to bring differentiated products to market. Our AI Co-Processors will reduce design complexity, energy use and product cost." said Bin Lei, Co-founder and Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “We are excited to collaborate with LG to launch their new smartphone with edge AI.”

Edge AI for video Bokeh, better image quality

Traditionally high end SoCs are best tailored for AI and SoCs including Snapdragon 800 and 700 are made for doing this AI heavy lifting, but with GTI’s power efficient AI accelerator even phones without the highest end SoC can score good scores in AI tasks including real-time video Bokeh effects, low light enhancement or super resolution.

It is important to mention that Gyrfalcon technology Inc. (GTI) is the first player that is enabling edge AI outside of the SoC. Traditionally Apple, Qualcomm and Samsung are using their in house AI as part of the SoC, but with GTI, phone manufacturers can enable great AI experience and real time effects for mainstream and lower end phones.

The company worked very hard and managed to translate algorithms and make a good SoC right on the first tape out, as tape outs are very expensive and time-consuming events.

LG phone shipping for South Korea carriers

LG’s new smartphone started shipping to customers on September 6th in South Korea on the LG Uplus, SK Telecom and KT networks, and is expected to be available in many global markets during 2019 and next year.

Image Enhancement will automatically apply lighting and blur correction to pictures taken, which will greatly improve the quality. The Video Bokeh Effect will allow a user to apply a soft “out-of-focus” background, behind subjects, in real time for videos, which results in a high-quality image that is in demand from photographers.

More edge AI capabilities will be provided in future system upgrades.

Last modified on 23 October 2019
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