Europe wants to become autonomous in the field of semiconductors and, with the European Chips Act, outlines the measures thanks to which the Continent can compete with the US and China, the undisputed market leaders for the moment.
Axelera AI, a startup under Dutch law, has announced that it has completed the processor validation process Thetis Corewhich will be on the market at the end of 2022. The European void is beginning to be filled, a first seed around which other seeds can sprout.
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What is Thetis Core and to whom it is aimed
We asked the co-founder and CEO of Axelera AI, Fabrizio Del Maffeo: “While the big players are focusing on AI chips for high-performance computers, cloud computing and data centers, what we are doing with Thetis Core is bringing higher computing capacity to the sensors at lower costs and with fewer energy consumption “.
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Thetis Core looks at the business-to-business market and the device market, the most European market, as CEO Del Maffeo explains: “it is the market that goes towards automation, robotics or medical and into which it is more difficult to enter because customers are more and, for each customer, the volumes are lower. It is an interesting market because the big players have not very advanced technological solutions and they don’t invest a lot of time “. The automotive sector is also part of the typically European market, the automotive sector, in which many players are entering but there is no dominator: “the technology we bring is high performance, low consumption and low cost. The cost of the chip is given by its surface, by its size. Our chip and our technology brings very high performance at a low cost because it is small, this makes us competitive and we always will be. Our chip will be used to give AI, thus accelerating deep learning and machine learning in devices. For example, we always talk about safety at work, and our chip can add intelligence to machinery or surveillance cameras to block machinery before an accident or block a person before they enter a construction site without safety guards, all a series of things that can be enabled with little “. This is possible if the AIs are able to act in proximity to the sensors.
For those with a thirst for technical details, the chip reaches a speed of 39.3 Top / s (metric indicating trillions of operations per second) with an efficiency of 14.1 Tops per Watt. The nominal clock speed can be increased up to 48.16 Tops per second and consumption can go down to 33 Tops per Watt. Axelera AI proposes itself as a serious player, also considering that a similar energy efficiency is much lower than the standards proposed by more well-known manufacturers.
The validation process
The functioning of the validation process starts from the design of the chip: “Then there is the production, explains Del Maffeo, which takes place through large players, in this case the Taiwanese Tsmc (the largest independent semiconductor factory, nda) and later it is pre-validated, in our case by Imec (an organization also active in the research and development of nanotechnologies and digital technologies, ed.) to then be validated by our team “. The purpose of the validation process is to physically measure whether the desired numbers coincide with those obtained. “We have obtained a positive delta of 6%, we have achieved higher numbers than we expected”.
The geopolitical context
Europe, as written at the beginning, wants to mend the gap that separates it from the United States and China, it is therefore important that there are European companies capable of innovating: “At the moment we do not see any and large groups such as Nxp, STMicroelectronics and Infineon does not. We want to take the landscape by the hand and propose new technology and a new market ”, explains Del Maffeo.
This reminds us of the European Chips Act, which is a good set of rules but cannot remain so: “Europe must also invest in research, not just in the production of chips. Companies like ours do not have to wait for the help of Brussels, they must focus on the fact that Europe creates a collaborative fabric and puts sufficient capital in the hands of Venture Capital to select and sponsor this fabric. Abroad, the US and China do it ”.
The startup in numbers
Born in July 2021, today it has 53 people who will become 65 in July and a hundred by the end of the year. “People who come from all over Europe, we also have a branch in Pisa but we are expanding to Milan and Bologna, the city that hosts the iFab foundation which we have been part of for a week. Italy is a very interesting territory for us for the research and development part “.
A multicultural company that also has offices in Eindhoven, Belgium and Zurich with expansions in Ireland, Romania and Portugal. “We want to be truly European, ours is a Dutch startup only for the statute, we hire people where we find them. We are not creating a chip, we are creating a company that designs computing and AI solutions in Europe. We have raised 17 million in 10 months and we will raise another 25-30 million in the future ”. Six of the 17 million in the first round is a loan from a Dutch public funding program.
Axelera AI expects strong growth, does not hide a certain ambition and is willing to recognize the right value to human resources, paying them according to level standards. Del Maffeo also focuses on the company philosophy: “We have a culture that leads us to independence, even making mistakes, but moving quickly with a dynamic team. We are doing everything to recruit in Italy and I want this company to survive and to influence the Italian fabric as well. We want to create innovative things that improve everyone’s quality of life “.
Italy can play a prestigious role: “It will take time but it will have an important role, our advisor Luca Benini, who teaches in Zurich and Bologna, is a European luminary. Italy has very well-trained people who want to form an ecosystem “.