BrainChip
More info
- Creator
- Peter van der Made
- Released
- Type
- Semiconductor company (neuromorphic)
- Website
- brainchip.com
Australian company whose Akida processor mimics the brain's spiking neurons instead of crunching floating-point.
Founded in 2004 by Peter van der Made and listed on Australia's ASX since 2015. Its flagship Akida is a neuromorphic processor: rather than pushing whole matrices forward, it works event-driven with "spikes", like biological neurons, drawing power only when something actually happens. It can also learn new patterns on-chip without being sent back to a data center.
The aim is ultra-low power for sensors and devices in the field. Neuromorphic hardware has promised much for decades without breaking through widely — it sits awkwardly with today's tooling, which all assumes matrices and floating-point. BrainChip is one of the few attempts to actually ship silicon rather than stay in the lab.