- This new perception chip supports real-time awareness with great performance
- Permanent tracking could also improve smartphone camera performance
- Object recognition, positional tracking, and scene understanding are also supported.
Swiss semiconductor startup Mosaic has successfully raised $3.8 million in funding to build so-called super-efficient perception chips, which would be installed in smart glasses and other wearable devices to bring more powerful processing to smaller form factors.
The company’s co-founder and CEO, Alfio Di Mauro, maintains that “spatial intelligence should not require an application-class processor and a GPU,” hence the creation of the Mosaic SoC, which aims to deliver “real-time perception with a fraction of the power.”
Mosaic says its “next-generation perception chips” will address some of the bottlenecks currently facing wearable device makers, including battery size, heat production, device thickness, and engineering complexity.
Are perception chips the answer to powerful but thin wearable devices?
While cameras and sensors continue to improve, manufacturers are under increasing pressure to add more processing and computing power inside devices while maintaining (or even decreasing) the form factor.
The perception chip is said to be capable of providing real-time environmental awareness, object recognition, positional tracking and scene understanding while consuming only a fraction of the power that a conventional smartphone-type computing stack would consume, making it ideal for future AR glasses and headsets.
“The Mosaic SoC chips are designed to be small and efficient enough to make smart glasses indistinguishable from regular glasses, while still offering full spatial awareness,” the company stated in a press release.
Early smart glasses, such as the Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta devices, currently rely heavily on smartphone pairing to make the most of the technology they offer because physical limitations of size and weight prevent them from being able to install the relevant hardware. On the other hand, Apple’s Vision Pro often draws criticism for its weight (750-800g), making it uncomfortable to use for longer periods.
However, the use cases extend far beyond glasses: in smartphones, perception chips could power always-on tracking and classification to deliver continuous awareness with minimal impact on battery life.
Extra power and big goals.
Where Mosaic’s perception chip differs from others is that while others rely on single- or dual-code ARM-based designs, this one uses a proprietary design and multi-core architecture of eight or more cores, which maximizes performance per watt to back up Mosaic’s bold efficiency claims.
Mosaic also claims to eliminate original design manufacturer (ODM) complexity, shipping its chips with a complete application layer developed and maintained by the startup.
While the company has already achieved “significant revenue” through NRE contracts with ODM partners, future plans revolve around much more than being a chip supplier. This startup has big visions of becoming a platform provider, where applications are developed specifically for its silicon.
“The next billion smart devices will see and understand the world around them,” said Antonia Albert, an investor at major Swiss pre-seed fund Founderful. “The Mosaic SoC product is the chip that makes this possible at scale.”
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