This agreement marks a major milestone for bringing the Akida NSoC to market.

Socionext Inc, headquartered in Shin-Yokohama, Japan, is the combination of the former Fujitsu and Panasonic System-on-Chip (SoC) businesses. According to IHS, Socionext is the world’s second largest ASIC design and development house. SNA, the American division of SNI, is headquartered in Santa Clara, California.

This joint programme pairs Socionext’s wide variety of engineering disciplines and decades of ASIC design experience with Brainchip’s proven AI engineering teams in Aliso Viejo, California and Toulouse, France.

Akida is a complete edge network AI SoC, which includes on-chip training, inference and continuous unsupervised learning. As the first complete neuromorphic neural network SoC to address AI Edge applications, the device supports both traditional Convolutional Neural Networks or event-based Spiking Neural Networks.

Socionext will provide turn-key ASIC services to Brainchip for the Akida product, including intellectual property (IP) blocks for the external interfaces, the CPU Complex for internal control and data pre-processing, place and route of the integrated circuit, IP verification, final logic design, as well as managing wafer fabrication, assembly and test operations. Wafers will be provided by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd (TSMC), a world leader in semiconductor technology and wafer fabrication on its competitive and cost effective 28nm CMOS logic process.

“We are excited to join Brainchip in the design, development and introduction of Akida,” said Noriaki Kubo, Corporate Executive Vice President of Socionext. “Bringing artificial intelligence to edge applications is a major industry development and a strategic application segment for Socionext. Socionext provides suppliers such as Brainchip with a large engineering solutions platform, ranging from integrated circuit design through final test and assembly, to bring high quality products to market efficiently.”

“We are extremely pleased to work with Socionext, one of the world’s leading SoC development and manufacturing teams,” said Louis DiNardo, CEO of Brainchip. “With the firm backing by such a preeminent partner, we are confident we will be supplying the world’s first complete AI Edge network solution.”

Additionally, Brainchip has entered into a financing agreement with CST Capital Pty Ltd ACN 628 583 700 as trustee of the CST Investments Fund (CST Capital) for US$2.565 million. This funding will provide the necessary capital for the initial development of the Akida device.