FEATURE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
AI ENABLES THE FUTURE LAPTOP
From a Lattice Semiconductor White Paper
an ideal hardware platform for the AI layer. They provide enough processing power to handle basic AI tasks (presence detection, for example), but do so while consuming much less power than the SoC. If the AI layer determines the SoC needs to be involved with the task, it can then wake it to supplement the AI layer’s processing capabilities or take other action. Lattice provides this AI capability today
through the Lattice sensAI solutions stack, which layers AI functionality over the iCE40 UltraPlus, ECP5, and CrossLink-NX FPGAs. Lattice sensAI solutions can also be
used in a laptop to help: • Detect when the user is looking at the
E
ngineers are hard at work developing laptop computers that will provide
users with the kind of experiences that they’ve already come to expect from smartphones and tablets. The future laptop will be easier to use, have a longer battery life, and be more secure than today’s models. Lattice FPGAs will be key to enabling these new capabilities and features in laptops. Doing more work outside the SoC allows the SoC to sleep more, waking only when its computing power is truly required. A sensor hub with an AI layer, implemented in pure hardware, will connect multiple cameras, microphones, and other sensors, meaning more downtime for the SoC. An I/O hub driving multiplexed signals will reduce signal count, making laptops easier to build and providing a richer user experience by enabling AI-based sensor fusion.
ALWAYS-ON AND INSTANT-ON One specific laptop trend is the always- on and instant-on behaviour. The name of the game here is saving energy. Today there are only three ways to put
a laptop to sleep or wake it up: push a button (maybe with the mouse), close the lid, or wait for the laptop to time- out. Newer laptops might also be
22 APRIL 2021 | ELECTRONICS
awakened by a voice command. The challenge with a laptop is its
central system-on-chip (SoC). The SoC is in charge of what happens in the laptop, and, for that reason, it’s involved in most tasks that the laptop performs. It contains the CPU cores, and it may include other processing and peripheral circuits as well. And it burns a lot of energy in doing its work. Because the SoC is involved in so many
of the laptop’s activities, there is little that the laptop can do while the system – and the SoC in particular – sleeps. The only capabilities available during sleep relate to the few options for waking the system back up. No other tasks can run on a sleeping system. In some cases, if they do (download email, network monitoring), they consume 100s of milliwatts of energy; a significant drain on battery life. There are many tasks that a laptop can
perform even while the SoC sleeps, if it is enhanced by an AI layer that responds to sensor signals. The AI capabilities can do work or make decisions while the SoC is asleep, ultimately determining whether the SoC should wake up for further work or whether it can remain asleep and let the AI layer handle the required task. Low-power FPGAs make
screen. When the user looks away, the laptop can save power by dimming the screen, and then brighten it when the user refocuses on the screen
• Adjust security according to the laptop’s location
• Detect where the user’s gaze is directed. This can help with tasks that would ordinarily require a mouse; instead, eye-tracking could provide hands-free operation of some frequent tasks
• Optimise how energy is spent on the graphics. That energy can be used for rendering the part of the screen where the user is looking. The rest of the screen can remain fuzzier or more poorly rendered, saving energy, until the user shifts their gaze to a different part of the screen
• Influence the narrative trajectory of a game, directed by the movement of the player’s eyes
• Detect someone looking over a laptop user’s shoulder
• Dim the laptop screen if no one is using it to save battery life Read the full White Paper Bringing Laptops Into the 2020s.
Lattice Semiconductor
https://www.latticesemi.com/
/ ELECTRONICS
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