STMicroelectronics Announces Edge AI Suite for Hardware and Software
December 06, 2023
News
In an announcement today, STMicroelectronics is introducing a new Edge AI Suite designed to help companies transform products with AI tools. The company said that the new integrated set of software tools are free-to-use with ST hardware and will drive new designs and deployment of billions of connected, autonomous things embedding AI.
“We are moving towards a world with tens of billions of connected, autonomous things bringing value and convenience to their users throughout all aspects of consumer life and enterprise productivity. To achieve this, AI algorithms will need to be run both in the cloud and on-device, at the edge across a broad range of devices: smartphones and connected personal devices, smart home and building control systems, industrial machines, cars and many more,” said Jean-Marc Chery, President and CEO of STMicroelectronics in the release. “ST products are already at the core of all those devices, but it is their combination with the industry-leading, free software suite we are announcing today that will make the difference. This combination will enable the transition to a more intelligent edge, empowering customers of any size to deploy edge AI more easily and build their vision of this connected future leveraging ST’s hardware portfolio.”
A preview of the ST Edge AI suite capabilities was presented today at ST’s online Edge AI Summit. In that presentation, ST said the suite will help embedded designers create optimized machine learning models, data scientists run new models on embedded devices, and product designers and creators redefine products.
The first release of the ST Edge AI suite will be available in the first half of 2024.
ST defined its strategy on AI as relying on a comprehensive, integrated set of tools, technical and educational examples, and the ST Edge AI Core Technology.
ST Edge AI Suite reportedly works across multiple ST hardware platforms, including: STM32 general-purpose MCUs, automotive microcontrollers for supporting carmakers in their transition to software-defined vehicles with predictive maintenance of the electric powertrain to extend vehicle lifetime or battery management systems to maximize energy efficiency, embedded intelligent sensors or ISPU, and machine learning cores or MLC. ST says that all of the above are supported by a broad range of evaluation and development boards.
According to the release, the ST Edge AI Core will be able to import ML and NN algorithms from the most widely used ML frameworks, provide a detailed analysis, optimize the algorithm for the selected devices (sensors, MCU, MPU), validate against the original model, and finally map the resulting embedded AI solution on the selected device. It will be possible to benchmark the same AI algorithm on different platforms, in pure SW or exploiting specific HW accelerators, to assess accuracy and inference time in a few clicks.
In addition, the release says that the ST NanoEdge AI Studio autoML tool now becomes free for STM32, and is now available for all ARM Cortex-M based MCUs. At the same time, ST’s autoML tool NanoEdge AI Studio also will become free. The deployment of libraries created by NanoEdge AI Studio will now be at no cost for unlimited deployment on any STM32 microcontroller. In addition, as NanoEdge AI Studio targets all ARM Cortex-M based microcontrollers, clients will now be able to build and deploy libraries, including unique on-device learning, on other ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers under a special license agreement.
Ken Briodagh is a writer and editor with two decades of experience under his belt. He is in love with technology and if he had his druthers, he would beta test everything from shoe phones to flying cars. In previous lives, he’s been a short order cook, telemarketer, medical supply technician, mover of the bodies at a funeral home, pirate, poet, partial alliterist, parent, partner and pretender to various thrones. Most of his exploits are either exaggerated or blatantly false.
