Interview FPGA’s -
The high road to smarter AI
Lattice Semiconductor is teaming up with Lenovo on a new era of AI compute capability, Hussein Osman, Marketing Director of Client Compute Devices tells us more.
L
attice FPGAs will be the AI brainpower behind Lenovo’s latest range of Edge/ AI TinkPad devices, under a new
partnership between Lattice Semiconductor and Lenovo. Tis all sounds very hi-tech but just what does this mean to you and me? Hussein Osman, Marketing Director, Client Compute Devices, Lattice Semiconductor (hopefully) sheds some light.
What were the important factors that led to Lenovo selecting Lattice CrossLink-NX FPGAs and AI-optimised soſtware solutions into its latest TinkPad X1 portfolio? Tere are several reasons why FPGA platforms are chosen to implement AI functionality PCs. First, AI is evolving very rapidly as new functions are added. Te reprogrammability of FPGAs provides designers with flexibility - they can quickly and easily implement new designs, which would take months and huge amounts of NRE dollars if a custom chip were to be chosen instead. Furthermore, Re-programmability enables the device platform to continuously evolve along with the AI applications. Second, Lattice’s FPGAs are ultra-low power, consuming just a
few milliwatt to under 1W. Tis is vital because many AI functions are designed to maximise battery life, so the AI implementation
42 | March 2022
must also consume as little energy as possible. In terms of performance, FPGAs can execute multiple use cases in parallel or serial, so offer performance - in terms of inferences/second up to 20x greater than competing ASIC solutions. Finally, Lattice FPGAs are highly secure.
Terefore, Lattice FPGAs are a sweet spot for this application, and the sensAI stack enables client compute applications to be quickly developed and delivered.
Please could you explain more about the benefits the end user will experience? OEMs are using Lattice FPGAs to deliver
several AI-based benefits. Users want their devices to have the same ‘instant on and aware’ performance that they experience with their mobile phones. User presence detection enabled by AI gives that capability. A smart laptop can extend battery life by dimming its display when it detects that the user’s attention is focused elsewhere - such attention tracking has been shown to deliver up to 28% more battery life. Lenovo’s new smart laptops can also leverage image data from the camera to determine if someone is shoulder- surfing and blur the screen for privacy, effectively protecting the user against visual hacking. Another AI-based function that Lattice sensAI and FPGAs can deliver is face framing, which enables more collaborative conference experiences.
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