What is the logic behind the hot AI voice chip?

If we want to summarize the current situation of AI creation in recent two years, financing and core building are the topics that can not be avoided. The word chip will most likely be selected in 2018.

From last year's fever, a strong chemical reaction took place quickly under the catalysis of ZTE. Among them, the most interesting thing is the rapid rise of AI voice chip.

From May to July, in just two months, from the publicly reported information, more than 5 companies announced that they had made AI voice chips.

What is the logic behind the hot AI voice chip?

So why do we all agree to publish AI voice chips at this time node? What is the logic behind it?

Fuse: a small explosion in the smart box Market

This year's 618 promotional activities, Tmall elf played a price marketing war, only 99 yuan can buy a smart speaker. Soon, in July 5th, Tmall elves announced that within a year, their total sales volume exceeded 5 million units.

The mogul's behavior of lowering the price is quickly triggered by a chain reaction. The discussion on the mouth of the smart speaker is very crowded, and the wind brought by Amazon has finally come home.

According to the latest research report released by Strategy Analytics, the total sales volume of smart speakers reached 9 million 200 thousand in the first quarter of 2018, up 278% over the same period last year.

What is the logic behind the hot AI voice chip?

"When the amount of equipment is just beginning to rise, we suddenly realize that the chip is a very important link and put the necessity of it in a higher position." Huang Wei, the founder of the AI voice chip, started talking about the recent chip fever.

The explosion of this smart speaker market has led many to see potential AI voice chip market opportunities.

According to reports from foreign media Information in March, Amazon is designing a AI chip to support the smart sound box Echo, when it was said that Amazon already has 449 employees with chip expertise and skills.

Coincidentally, just acquired by Ali, Zhongtian micro, also said in early July to issue intelligent voice chip.

The potential action of the giant is one of the most important market vane, and the fuse has naturally burned to the AI voice chip, exploring the logic behind it, and the AI voice chip's advantage over the traditional common chip.

In fact, the earliest general chip is not very effective in voice, usually the combination of multimedia digital encoder + digital signal module processing.

At the end of 2014, when Amazon's Echo came out, some semiconductor manufacturers aimed at the market and began to launch voice chips, the most typical of which was the co - hair division. It was understood that at the time, it was speculated that nearly 80% of the chips in the smart box Market in 2016 were provided by MTK, which benefited from their deep cooperation with Amazon Echo.

When intelligent hardware demands more and more voice interaction, many things need to be implemented at the end, such as wake-up and data signal processing. Considering the factors of security and network, AI voice chip is inevitable.

Compared with voice chip, AI voice chip has high integration, low power consumption and low cost, and can realize the perfect combination of algorithm and terminal.

Rokid co - founder Wang Shunde, in response to the answer to the AI voice chip, said, "because we know the pain of making the product, understanding the price of the chip will drive the whole product, and the chips are very power consuming and low - integrated. After experiencing these pain points, we want to optimize the design of chips and use the algorithm of our front-end.

Algorithm chip hardware: the inevitability of commercial landing

Carefully comb out a few mainstream AI enterprises to create AI voice chip thinking, most of them choose to cooperate with experienced chip companies in depth.

For example, go out and ask Rokid to announce that its chip is based on Hangzhou national core technology chip depth customization, in which Rokid's KAMINO18 is based on the 40nm technology based GX8010 manufacturing, GX8010 is the NPU chip of the main AI interaction issued by the country core last year. The chip is designed for the Internet of things, with low power consumption, offline, removable. The advantage. When it announced that the chip was being built, it also mentioned that they would cooperate with a chip giant in the AI chip and set up a joint venture company.

What is the logic behind the hot AI voice chip?

Chip company provides low power, low integration design architecture, AI voice technology company will be in the microphone array signal processing, voice interaction SDK and voice noise reduction, wake up, recognition understanding of the effort to integrate its own AI voice interaction technology into it.

Why the technology of the algorithm is landing, we need to start with the hardware after the chip. The reason is inseparable from the hardware and software environment of our country.

HUAWEI's rotation, CEO Xu Zhijun, said at the 2018 soft fair, "domestic customers especially do not accept software charges, leading to the failure of domestic software - based enterprises to form a business model."

The software sales mode we accept is similar to the hardware mode. In China, hardware is considered to be valuable, software is not worth money, and its cost is low.

Therefore, if we want to achieve rapid growth in business and Commerce and scale explosion, it is very difficult to do algorithm and software only. The latest technologies and programmes, including products through hardware carriers, are more likely to achieve scale growth and replication.

Therefore, AI's algorithm is integrated into the chip of the chip company, and it can be said to be a labor-saving and discussion.