Former NASA administrator of startups is called KnuEdge, launched "neurons" chip built-in 256 processor cores, creativity comes from a mission to Mars...

VentureBeat reported according to the science and technology website, aiming at developing neural network chip KnuEdge cannot be simply regarded as a startup, it was founded 10 years ago by NASA's former leader, Daniel Goldin (Daniel Goldin), it's only out of "stealth mode". KnuEdge has raised $100 million, the purpose is to develop a "chip". According to Mr Golding, the new chip can improve the efficiency of data center operation.

Golding in 1992-2001 served as the director of the United States national aeronautics and space administration (NASA), the graph is golding in 2010 at an institution.

Golding argues that with the current architecture based on the von neumann computer chips, compared KnuEdge neural chip has greater advantages in terms of cost and energy consumption. In the von neumann architecture, in the computer memory and processor from each other, through the bus. In the past few years, by more and more on the bus at a higher speed transmission data, constantly improve the von neumann architecture computer speed. However, the computer speed is limited by the bus data throughput, cause computer scientists call "von neumann bottleneck". IBM has realized this problem, set up a research and development team and the brain chip similar data center. KnuEdge and IBM development new chip, the objective is to deal with data explosion caused by artificial intelligence and machine learning.

KnuEdge work similar to IBM, but they just "like", because the two companies using different methods. Golding told VentureBeat in an interview, the company has received $20 million in revenue, is working with very large scale computing company, as well as aerospace, banking, health care, hotels and insurance industry's fortune 500 companies engage actively. He said KnuEdge's mission is to promote dramatic change in the computing industry, it originated in a mission to Mars.

In 2000, Mr Golding to realize control of spacecraft order delay too long, so the spacecraft must be able to run independently. A mission to Mars, he estimates, need software will challenge the limits of science and technology, the code will be more than tens of millions of lines of, "the software cost is too high, it is a big problem, is our country intolerable". Golding hence initiation development new chip.

Golding KnuEdge, founded in 2005, and was granted a long-term investment, "I knew when I contact investors, we can't go the way of the traditional financing in silicon valley (immediately after the investment returns). I want to develop is a revolutionary technology, as a new generation of machine learning system development tools in the future, to improve the human-computer interaction interface. Our board members are legendary merchant and technical experts, we know there will be a decade-long run-up period." But Mr Golding didn't disclose KnuEdge board membership.

Speech recognition technology to security

KnuEdge chip is part of a larger platform. Golding said KnuEdge will also release KnuVerse - military-grade speech recognition and authentication technology, it will make the speech technology for the next generation of computing systems.

In spite of the past five years of voice technology market in Siri, Cortana, Google Home and Echo voice assistant driven by explosive growth. Affected by the safety and the noise, however, most of the commercial voice technology team's vision has not been implemented. KnuVerse solution speech recognition based on patented technology, applicable to the environmental noise is very big. Safety of voice recognition technology can be applied to Banks, entertainment and hotel industry.

KnuEdge said, no matter use what language, as long as several word into the microphone, computer, mobile applications and the Internet of things device can the user identity authentication, this process won't be affected by the ambient noise. Besides KnuVerse KnuEdge also to developers released Knurld. IO development tools and a speech recognition based on cloud computing and certification services. Under normal circumstances, to integrate the service to the application of only 2 hours.

KnuEdge announced support LambdaFabric KnuPath chip technology. This is the first KnuEdge development chip, using the relatively backward manufacturing process, there are 256 kernel integration, each kernel is equivalent to a miniature digital signal processor. Golding said LambdaFabric each kernel can instantly connected together, help to overcome the current one of the major problem facing multicore chips. LambdaFabric can connect up to 512000 devices,

Makes the system can adapt to the processing ability of most demanding computing environment. When signal transmission between different frame, LambdaFabric delay is only 400 nanoseconds. The whole system energy consumption is quite low.

The brain at a low energy consumption to complete a large amount of computing tasks biology, is the foundation of all KnuEdge design. KnuPath chip based on golding of the so-called "heterogeneous sparse matrix machine learning algorithm, using c + + write software operation. Programmers can let each kernel to run different algorithms, the kernel can run in parallel. Golding said, this is a kind of multiple input and multiple data design, "so that we can get need processing capacity".

Market Research firm Tirias Research, chief analyst at bao, tai chi (Paul Teich) said in a statement, "KnuEdge from" stealth mode ", the purpose is to use its new speech and machine learning technology, solve the Internet of things, cloud computing based key problem in the field of machine learning and pattern recognition."

The first chip available

Golding said today that KnuEdge plan showing its design. KnuEdge in December last year to complete the first chip design, will share the chip to potential customers. Mr Golding said that the first chip manufactured 32 nm process, despite the relatively backward technology, but its capacity is still quite strong, the performance is 2 to 6 times of similar chip, "the human brain has hundreds of billions of neurons, each neuron is connected with at least 10000-100000 neurons. The human brain is the world's effectiveness than the highest and the most powerful computer processing power".

The new chip KnuEdge in design. KnuEdge revenue by selling prototype system, each motherboard integration has four chips.

When it comes to compete with IBM, golding said, "I think we made the right choice, to choose the right direction. IBM's approach is different from us. We are not for anyone, we just for the future development."

KnuEdge has 100 employees, said Mr Golding, KnuEdge outsourcing almost all work. KnuEdge plan, he says, at the end of this year or early next year to a new round of financing. KnuEdge partners include the university of California, San Diego.

Golding said, had to deal with natural language of the computer system, many of the people who can't read or write will be able to more easily take care of themselves, "I want to be able to use machine learning to help people to communicate and to make a living. This is just the beginning, the field is equivalent to the wild west. We are communicating with all big companies, they are very excited.

An example of application of KnuEdge technology is a room with higher self awareness, if an exception occurs within the room, KnuEdge system can analyze the abnormal situation, determine whether need to report to the owner.

When talking about KnuEdge technique can be used to humans on Mars, golding said, "this technology opened to the expedition to Mars the person or organization. If KnuEdge technique was used to humans on Mars, I will be very happy."