TI Launches New AI Processor for Controlling Up to 12 Cameras

Six Armⓡ Cortexⓡ-based vision processor product families
Vision and AI processing with lower cost and higher energy efficiency

Texas Instruments (TI) has launched new processors that enable economical and easy vision and AI processing for up to 12 cameras in building, industrial, and retail automation applications, and is expected to facilitate the development and scaling of AI designs in homes and industrial settings.

TI Korea (CEO Park Joong-seo) held a media briefing at the TI Korea office on the 21st and announced six new Armⓡ Cortexⓡ-based vision processor product families to further accelerate innovation in edge intelligence.

The new product families enable design engineers to add vision and artificial intelligence processing to doorbell cameras, machine vision, and autonomous mobile robots with lower cost and higher energy efficiency.

The new product family, which includes AM62A, AM68A, and AM69A processors, is supported by programmable common software through open source evaluation and model development tools and industry-standard APIs (application programming interfaces), frameworks, and models.

This vision processor, software, and tools platform helps design engineers reduce time-to-market while enabling them to easily develop and scale edge AI designs across multiple systems.

TI's new vision processors address cost and design complexity challenges in implementing vision processing and deep learning capabilities in low-power edge AI applications, enabling intelligence from the cloud to be utilized in real-world applications.

These processors feature a system-on-chip (SoC) architecture with extensive integration. Integrated components include Arm Cortex-A53 or Cortex-A72 central processing units, third-generation TI image signal processors, embedded memory, interfaces, and hardware accelerators that provide 1 to 32 TOPS (tera operations) AI processing for deep learning algorithms.

Looking at key products, the AM62A3, AM62A3-Q1, AM62A7, and AM62A7-Q1 support 1 to 2 cameras with less than 2W of power in applications such as doorbell cameras and smart retail systems. They include the AM62A3, the industry's most cost-effective 1-TOPS vision processor, starting at $12 per 1,000-unit quantity.

The AM68A supports 1 to 8 cameras in applications such as machine vision and enables up to 8 TOPS of AI processing for advanced video analytics systems.

The AM69A supports 1 to 12 cameras with 32 TOPS of AI processing in high-performance applications such as edge AI boxes, autonomous mobile robots, and traffic monitoring systems.

Design engineers can reduce time-to-market for edge AI applications starting in the second quarter of 2023 through the beta of Edge AI Studio, TI's free open-source tool. Edge AI Studio, through a web-based tool with various features, enables users to quickly and easily develop and test based on user-created models and TI's optimized models. TI's models can also be retrained using user-based data.

The AM68A processor has begun shipment through TI and authorized distributors, and early production samples of AM62A and AM69A are available for purchase through TI.

Pricing for AM6xA processors starts at $12 per 1,000-unit quantity. Starter kits for AM62A ($249), AM68A ($249), and AM69A ($299) are available for purchase at TI.com.