Performance Analysis of Edge and In-Sensor AI Processors: A Comparative Review
This review examines the rapidly evolving landscape of ultra-low-power edge processors, covering heterogeneous Systems-on-Chips (SoCs), neural accelerators, near-sensor and in-sensor architectures, and emerging dataflow and memory-centric designs. We categorize commercially available and research-grade platforms according to their compute paradigms, power envelopes, and memory hierarchies, and analyze their suitability for always-on and latency-critical Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads. To complement the architectural overview with empirical evidence, we benchmark a 336 million Multiply-Accumulate (MAC) segmentation model (PicoSAM2) on three representative processors: GAP9, leveraging a multi-core RISC-V architecture augmented with hardware accelerators; the STM32N6, which pairs an advanced ARM Cortex-M55 core with a dedicated neural architecture accelerator; and the Sony IMX500, representing in-sensor stacked-Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) compute. Collectively, these platforms span MCU-class, embedded neural accelerator, and in-sensor paradigms. The evaluation reports latency, inference efficiency, energy efficiency, and energy-delay product. The results show a clear divergence in hardware behavior, with the IMX500 achieving the highest utilization (86.2 MAC/cycle) and the lowest energy-delay product, highlighting the growing significance and technological maturity of in-sensor processing. GAP9 offers the best energy efficiency within microcontroller-class power budgets, and the STM32N6 provides the lowest raw latency at a significantly higher energy cost. Together, the review and benchmarks provide a unified view of the current design directions and practical trade-offs that are shaping the next generation of ultra-low-power and in-sensor AI processors.
Code (0)
등록된 구현이 없습니다.
Similar Papers 제목 키워드 기반
Cain: Automatic Code Generation for Simultaneous Convolutional Kernels on Focal-plane Sensor-processors
Focal-plane Sensor-processors (FPSPs) are a camera technology that enable low power, high frame rate computation, making them suitable for edge computation. Unfortunately, these devices' limited instruction sets and regi…
Code GenerationComparative analysis of common edge detection techniques in context of object extraction
Edges characterize boundaries and are therefore a problem of practical importance in remote sensing.In this paper a comparative study of various edge detection techniques and band wise analysis of these algorithms in the…
Edge DetectionWearable Audio and IMU Based Shot Detection in Racquet Sports
Wearables like smartwatches which are embedded with sensors and powerful processors, provide a strong platform for development of analytics solutions in sports domain. To analyze players' games, while motion sensor based…
Hardware Implementation of Deep Network Accelerators Towards Healthcare and Biomedical Applications
The advent of dedicated Deep Learning (DL) accelerators and neuromorphic processors has brought on new opportunities for applying both Deep and Spiking Neural Network (SNN) algorithms to healthcare and biomedical applica…
DiagnosticElectromyography (EMG)Sensor FusionBrain Co-Processors: Using AI to Restore and Augment Brain Function
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) use decoding algorithms to control prosthetic devices based on brain signals for restoration of lost function. Computer-brain interfaces (CBIs), on the other hand, use encoding algorithms…