Linaro Ltd, the open source collaborative engineering organization developing software for the Arm® ecosystem, announced today that Horizon Robotics, a leading technology powerhouse of embedded Artificial Intelligence, has joined the 96Boards initiative as a Steering Committee Member.
Founded in 2015, Horizon Robotics is dedicated to providing integrated and open embedded Artificial Intelligence solutions of high performance, low power and low cost. In 2017, the company unveiled Journey and Sunrise - the world-leading Brain Processing Unit (BPU) based, proprietary Gauss-architecture embedded AI computer vision processors. The first mass-taped AI processors in China, Journey and Sunrise power smart cars and smart cameras while providing industrial customers with a complete solution, including algorithm, chip and cloud. Recently, Horizon Robotics raised an additional US$600 million in its latest funding round, taking the estimated value of the company up to US$3 billion.
The 96Boards Steering Committee provides Horizon Robotics with a neutral forum within which the start-up can collaborate with other 96Boards partners in the AI field. 96Boards is Linaro’s initiative to build a single worldwide software and hardware community across low-cost development boards. A large range of products compliant with the 96Boards specifications is available worldwide and this is supplemented with additional hardware functionality provided through standardized mezzanine boards.
Later in the year, the 96Boards Automotive Spefication will be launched, the aim of which is to define a standardized product specification for prototyping, product development and testing for ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems) and AD (autonomous driving) through collaboration. 96Boards Automotive wants to encourage the development of a heterogeneous computing platform and enable established silicon providers, as well as startups such as Horizon Robotics, to develop, promote and integrate with the rest of the automotive ecosystem in an open manner.
“Through participation of the 96Boards Steering Committee, we are further accelerating the pace of research & development and commercialization,” said Yu Kai, Founder and CEO of Horizon Robotics. “By partnering with members of 96Boards in the AI field, we hope to strengthen the “AI On Horizon” ecosystem business model, enabling system integrators and industry solution providers to actively participate in the evolution of smart city, smart retail, smart robotics, autonomous driving, and other important fields. Together with other 96Boards ecosystem partners, Horizon Robotics ushers in the era of artificial intelligence.”
“Horizon Robotics brings a wealth of experience and expertise in AI and automotive to the 96Boards Steering Committee,” said Yang Zhang, Director of 96Boards. “We believe their involvement will further help accelerate adoption of a heterogeneous computing platform, offering choice and stimulating innovation in ADAS and Autonomous Driving spaces from silicon, system, algorithms and applications.”
About Horizon Robotics
With smart mobility, smart city and smart retail as the main application scenarios, Horizon Robotics is dedicated to providing customers with open software platforms and application solutions based on its self-developed AI processors and algorithm software. A variety of terminal devices are equipped with an AI “brain” that empowers them with the intelligence for perception, interaction, understanding and decision making.
With world-leading capabilities for deep learning and decision-making algorithm development, Horizon Robotics integrates algorithms into high-performance, low-power and low-cost edge AI processors and computing platforms. In smart mobility, Horizon Robotics is the only start-up company in China which has established partnerships with Tier-1s and OEMs in all the top four global automotive markets (USA, Germany, Japan, and China). In smart city and smart retail, Horizon Robotics has collaborated with domestic partners to provide customized solutions to local authorities, manufacturing companies, shopping complexes and brand chain stores. Horizon Robotics is actively building an open edge AI ecosystem to work with upstream and downstream partners for joint development.
About Linaro
Linaro leads collaboration in the Arm ecosystem and helps companies work with the latest open source technology and accelerate deployment of Arm-based solutions. The company has over 300 engineers working on more than 70 open source projects, developing and optimizing software and tools, ensuring smooth product roll outs, and reducing maintenance costs. Work happens across segments including datacenter & cloud, edge & fog, IoT & embedded, consumer, machine intelligence, telecom & networking, autonomous vehicles, and high performance computing. Linaro is distribution neutral: it wants to provide the best software foundations to everyone by working upstream, and to reduce non-differentiating and costly low-level fragmentation. The effectiveness of the Linaro approach has been demonstrated by Linaro’s growing membership, and by Linaro consistently being listed as one of the top five company contributors, worldwide, to Linux kernels since 3.10.
To ensure commercial quality software, Linaro’s work includes comprehensive test and validation on member hardware platforms. The full scope of Linaro engineering work is open to all online. To find out more, please visit https://www.linaro.org and https://www.96Boards.org.