Esperanto Technologies unveils energy efficient RISC-V based Machine Learning Accelerator
PRESS RELEASE
August 24, 2021
About Esperanto Technologies:
Esperanto Technologies develops high-performance, energy-efficient computing solutions for Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning based on the open standard RISC-V instruction set architecture. Esperanto is headquartered in Mountain View, California with engineering sites in Portland, Oregon, Barcelona, Spain, and Belgrade, Serbia. For more information, please visit https://www.dev.esperanto.ai/
Esperanto’s Inference Accelerator Delivers Industry-Leading Performance per Watt for ML Recommendation Workloads
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., August 24, 2021 – Esperanto Technologies™, a developer of high-performance, energy-efficient machine learning (ML) inference accelerators based on the RISC-V instruction set, today announced that company founder and executive chairman Dave Ditzel will reveal new details of the company’s new ET-SoC-1 “supercomputer-on-a-chip” at the Hot Chips 33 conference on August 24, 2021, at 8:30 AM Pacific time. Featuring over a thousand RISC-V custom processor cores, Esperanto’s ML inference accelerator is designed to be the highest performance commercial RISC-V chip.
Designed to meet the high-performance but still air-cooled, low-power requirements of large-scale datacenter customers, Esperanto’s RISC-V-based inference chip is a general purpose, parallel processing solution that can accelerate many parallelizable workloads. The Esperanto chip is designed to operate at under 20 watts in order to fit within enterprise customers’ demanding system power constraints. The chip includes over a thousand energy-efficient RISC-V, ET-Minion™ processor cores each with its own custom vector / tensor unit, four high performance out-of-order RISC-V, ET-Maxion™ processor cores, and a high-performance memory system.
The Esperanto chip is designed to excel at machine learning recommendation models, one of the most important types of AI workloads in many large datacenters. Additional details about the new chip will be provided at the Hot Chips 33 Conference.
The company also announced that it expects to begin an Early Access Program for qualified customers later this year.
“I’m impressed with the energy efficiency and memory bandwidth of this new AI chip, which is the first and fastest RISC-V design we have seen for high-performance data center workloads” said Karl Freund, founder and principal analyst at Cambrian AI Research. “In addition, there are significant benefits to the programmer of using standard RISC-V cores, including flexibility and the ability to easily optimize code.”
“Esperanto’s chip is focused on high throughput with energy efficiency,” said Rich Wawrzyniak, principal market analyst at Semico Research Corporation. “With so many RISC-V cores operating in unison, the ability to process very large models operating using their low-voltage approach really delivers on the performance per watt.”
- Presentation: “Accelerating ML Recommendation with Over a Thousand RISC-V / Tensor Processors on Esperanto’s ET-SoC-1 Chip”
- When: August 24, 2021 at 8:30AM.
- Where: Virtual event, online.
- Agenda: https://www.hotchips.org/advance-program/
Dave Ditzel addresses Accelerating Machine Learning at Hot Chips 33
PRESS RELEASE
August 1, 2021
About Hot Chips 2021:
See https://www.hotchips.org/
About Esperanto Technologies:
Esperanto Technologies™ develops high-performance, energy-efficient computing solutions for Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning based on the open standard RISC-V instruction set architecture. Esperanto is headquartered in Mountain View, California with engineering sites in Portland, Oregon, Barcelona, Spain, and Belgrade, Serbia. For more information, please visit https://www.dev.esperanto.ai/
Archives News
Hear Dave Ditzel on “Accelerating ML Recommendation with over a Thousand RISC-V/Tensor Processors on Esperanto’s ET-SoC-1 Chip”
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., August 1, 2021 – See Esperanto Technologies, developer of high-performance, energy-efficient computing solutions based on RISC-V for Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) applications, at Hot Chips 33. Dave Ditzel, Chairman and Founder of Esperanto, will speak on accelerating machine learning at Hot Chips in August, 2021.
- Presentation: “Accelerating ML Recommendation with over a Thousand RISC-V / Tensor Processors on Esperanto’s ET-SoC-1 Chip”
- When: August 24, 2021 at 8:30AM.
- Where: Virtual event, online.
- Agenda: https://www.hotchips.org/advance-program/
Abstract:
Esperanto Technologies has developed an accelerator chip for large scale machine learning inference applications. While many chips for accelerating machine learning have been proposed and built, they often also have various limitations. Some implement solutions highly tailored for convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and other algorithms with fixed-function hardware such as systolic array multipliers but suffer with other ML tasks that don’t exactly match their hardware implemented algorithms. Some only work when the data fits entirely in on-die memory, making them not very suitable for ML recommendation server applications that can require many gigabytes of memory.
Esperanto has taken a different approach, using a large number of general-purpose RISC-V cores, each equipped with a vector/tensor unit optimized for common machine learning algorithms and data types. Esperanto’s chip is highly efficient, fully programmable, and adaptable as algorithms change. By leveraging the simplicity of the RISC-V instruction set and carefully designing with low-power techniques, Esperanto’s chip preserves many benefits of general-purpose programming while simultaneously maintaining excellent energy efficiency.
Esperanto’s low-power design allows multiple ET-SoC-1 chips to be placed on a single PCI Express card delivering many times the throughput of legacy x86, GPU and FPGA solutions, while staying within the power limits of a single accelerator card.
You can download the slides here: Hot Chips Slides 2021
Esperanto Technologies appoints Lee Flanagin as Chief Business Officer
PRESS RELEASE
July 14, 2021
About Esperanto Technologies
Esperanto Technologies™ develops high-performance, energy-efficient computing solutions for Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning based on the open standard RISC-V instruction set architecture. Esperanto is headquartered in Mountain View, California with engineering sites in Portland, Oregon, Barcelona, Spain, and Belgrade, Serbia. For more information, please visit https://www.dev.esperanto.ai/
Archives News
Experienced Artificial Intelligence and Semiconductor Executive to Spearhead Esperanto’s Marketing, Sales and Business Development.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., July 14, 2021 – Esperanto Technologies, developer of high-performance, energy-efficient computing solutions based on RISC-V for Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) applications, has appointed Lee Flanagin as Chief Business Officer. In this capacity, Lee will lead Esperanto’s marketing, sales, and business development as the company scales.
Lee’s executive career has spanned startups to Fortune 500 companies. His industry experience includes AI, semiconductors, IP, cloud, consumer electronics, networking, and storage.
Prior to joining Esperanto, Lee advised on corporate strategy, marketing, sales, ecosystem partnerships and business development for several AI chip startups focused on the datacenter and edge applications. He also advised block chain and thermal management solution startups. Previously, Lee was Chief Business Officer / Senior Vice President at Wave Computing; Advisor in the Office of the CTO at Cisco; Head of Worldwide Corporate Communications at SanDisk; Head of Corporate Communications at RAE Systems by Honeywell; and Vice President, Worldwide Corporate Communications at ARC International. Lee received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Michigan State University.
“We welcome Lee, who has an impressive track record in strategic marketing, international sales and business development, as well as organizational development at high-profile companies. Esperanto will benefit from his expertise in the high-growth AI markets and applications.” said Art Swift, president and CEO of Esperanto.
“Applications for AI / ML/ DL are exploding, and require innovative hardware and software. I am excited to join Esperanto to accelerate the adoption of their leading-edge technology and high-performance, energy-efficient computing solutions in these rapidly growing markets,” commented Lee Flanagin.