5G is bringing AIoT onto the fast lane and turning it into the core driver to the Internet of Everything. However, AIoT is more than a “Lego-like” combination of AI and IoT; rather, it is more about the in-depth fusion of AI with IoT connectivity technologies under the context of application scenarios and customization. Now AIoT faces three challenges:
1. Fragmentation: The Internet of Everything has created a variety of application scenarios and products; nevertheless, as a typical long tail market, AIoT is facing highly fragmented requirements, due to the restricted volume in each single market segment – diversified but small in size. In turn, those diversified requirements have resulted in fragmented technologies, including a highly distributed series of connectivity technologies, safety technologies, chips, solutions and operating systems.
2. Performance: With an increasing number of products and applications implemented, consumers now demand better user experience, which requires stronger capacities from AIoT platforms. In addition to higher AI computing power, intelligent endpoints have to be capable of handling different scenarios and edge computing.
3. Security: The combination of AI and IoT is adding extra complexity to security requirements. From chips and sensors, to hardware interfaces and software platforms, system level security challenges are everywhere. AIoT endpoints are not only challenged by the cloud-/channel/device-side security requirements, but also the security concerns of AI algorithms.
How could we address these three challenges in the era of AIoT?
UNISOC recently introduced new AIoT products, where the company officially announced IVY V5663 – a high-performance secure AIoT solution. With five outstanding features, including industry-leading technologies, powerful computing capability, security and reliability, rich sets of features, and ease of application development, IVY V5663 can be used extensively in diversified scenarios, such as smart home, healthcare, childhood education, aesthetic health care, warehousing and logistics. In order to enable the AIoT value chain, UNISOC has built an open and innovative development platform AILIGO to help developers better align technologies with scenarios, as well as improving the time-to-market for smart endpoints.
Industry-leading Technologies
11x faster Wi-Fi speed
70% lower power consumption with 22nm process
Designed for varied IoT applications, IVY V5663 is the first highly integrated AIoT solution with Wi-Fi 5 +BT 5 +MCU supports in China. It also integrates supports for the latest IEEE 802.11ac 2×2 Wi-Fi 5, 2.4GHz and 5GHz, dual mode classic BT and BT 5 and Wi-Fi & BT Mesh.
V5663 features an Arm Cortex-M33 dual-core processor architecture with operation frequency up to 442 MHz. Collaboration of two high-performance, programmable, ultra low power consumption processors ensures flexible scheduling and higher efficiency. This architecture also supports TrustZone security feature and fully functional DSP with ARMv8-M, with performance improvement by 20% compared with Cortex-M4.
Adopting advanced 22nm process, Wi-Fi throughput of V5663 is 11 times higher with 70% lower power consumption than the mainstream MCU Wi-Fi solutions in the market.
Moreover, indoor positioning based on fused Bluetooth AoD/AoA and Wi-Fi RTT supports precise positioning for applications like indoor navigation, reverse vehicle tracking and shopping mall traffic management. UNISOC is one of the few chip manufacturers in the industry to provide indoor positioning solutions based on fusion technology.
Powerful computing capability
442 MHz Main Frequency
Up to 2.68 DMIPS/MHz Dhrystone
For AI-enabled voice recognition and interaction, V5663 provides a RTOS-based, high-performance smart voice solution. With Dhrystone performance up to 2.68 DMIPS/MHz, it is the most powerful ARM Cortex-M MCU with highest clock frequency worldwide.
V5663 is the world’s first fully-integrated RTOS-based AIoT solution. In contrast to the mainstream MCU Wi-Fi solutions, V5663 supports dual-mic voice activation. Built in embedded NS, AEC, DOA and KWS dual-mic algorithms, voice commands can be recognized, processed and interacted reliably even in complicated noisy environment. Besides, hardware based VAD of V5663 can significantly reduce system power consumption.
Security and Reliability
Certified by Level 1, PSA
Ready for Level 2, PSA Certification
In addition to Arm Cortex-M TrustZone, IVY V5663 also integrates self development storage and peripheral isolation module, hardware encryption engine, true random number generator and other security features. With these hardware implementations, separated execution domain can be initiated by V5663 for protected and unprotected codes in a single core to provide system-wide hardware isolation for trusted software. Other SoC-level security features include hierarchical encryption and multilayer isolation. Starting from the inherent chip layer, V5663 is designed to offer comprehensive protection for IoT devices in terms of identity authentication, financial payment and information storage.
V5663 achieves the first ARM PSA Level 1 certification in China. Soon it will become one of the first AIoT solutions certified by Level 2, PSA in the world.
V5663 Certified by Level 1, PSA
Rich sets of features
Arm Cortex-M Series
Only V5663 Supports Smart Speaker and Visual Recognition Applications
V5663 provides a comprehensive range of peripheral interfaces for application extension, including USB2.0/3.0, eMMC, PWM, PDM, IIS and SPI, which can directly connect to sensors, codec and high-speed devices to eliminate the fragmentation problem of embedded designs. Besides, it also supports programming under Mbed and FreeRTOS environments through a full suite of communication protocols and popular cloud protocols. Since, it would be considerably easier for developers to integrate V5663 in various IoT endpoints.
Applications like smart speakers and visual recognition often require massive computing capacities, e.g., smart speakers need speech processing capacity for two or more mics. Therefore, V5663 is the only solution supporting such applications among chips based on Arm Cortex-M processor. In addition to common use cases like smart home, healthcare, childhood education, aesthetic health care, warehousing and logistics, V5663 can be applied in numerous differentiated products. Security, power consumption and performance design targets of IoT products can be adequately met to resolve the demand of hardware selection caused by diversified requirement.
Ease of application development
One-stop Services
15-min Onramp
UNISOC delivers a high efficiency and novel development platform AILIGO based on V5663, which adopts a modular and open-source approach providing an integrated development environment, Software Development Kits (SDKs) and complete technical supports. Whether you are developing products targeting diversified generic market segment or a single market segment, AILIGO platform can overcome the entry barrier of development by enabling ease of selection and flexible configuration. With a 15-min get started mastering, developers can focus on the value-adding application customization, instead of complicated hardware selection, to accelerate the development cycle of smart appliances, and ultimately excel in the fast-changing IoT market.
The open developer community for AILIGO (coming soon), on the other hand, provides one-stop services for developers, including resources, tools, learning and exchange opportunities, application practices and technical support.
Long Wang, Executive Vice President of UNISOC, said: “AIoT has created endless possibilities for the Internet of Everything. As an open and innovative product, V5663 is designed to help developers addressing in-depth application scenarios and endpoint innovation, and ultimately create a truly intelligent ‘Connected World’, through its strong performance, powerful computing capability, ultra-low power consumption, all-new security architecture, rich sets of features and highly efficient development platform.”