- This brand new perception chip supports real-time awareness with tremendous efficiency
- Always-on tracking can also improve smartphone camera performance
- Object recognition, position tracking and scene understanding are also supported
Swiss semiconductor startup Mosaic has successfully raised $3.8 million in funding to build super-efficient so-called perception chips that would be installed across smart glasses and other wearables to bring more powerful processing into smaller form factors.
The company’s co-founder and CEO Alfio Di Mauro argues that “spatial intelligence should not require an application-class processor and a GPU,” hence the start of the Mosaic SoC, which aims to deliver “real-time perception for a fraction of the energy.”
Mosaic says its “next-generation perception chips” will address some of the current bottlenecks facing wearable manufacturers today, including battery size, heat output, device thickness and technical complexity.
Are perception chips the answer to powerful yet slim wearables?
As cameras and sensors continue to improve, manufacturers are under increasing pressure to add more computing and processing power inside devices while maintaining (or even shrinking) the form factor.
The Perception chip is said to be capable of providing real-time environmental awareness, object recognition, position tracking and scene understanding while consuming only a fraction of the power a conventional smartphone-class computing stack would consume, making it ideal for future AR glasses and headsets.
“The Mosaic SoC chips are designed to be small enough and efficient enough to make smart glasses indistinguishable from regular glasses while still delivering full spatial awareness,” the company stated in a press release.
Early smart glasses like the Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta units currently rely heavily on smartphone pairing to get the most out of the technology they provide, because the physical limitations of size and weight prevent them from being able to install the relevant hardware. On the flip side, Apple’s Vision Pro is often criticized for its sheer weight (750-800g), which makes it uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time.
However, use cases extend far beyond just glasses – in smartphones, perception chips can enable always-on tracking and classification to deliver continuous awareness with minimal impact on battery life.
Extra power and big targets
Where Mosaic’s perception chip differs from others is that where others rely on single- or dual-code ARM-based designs, this one uses a proprietary design and a multi-core architecture of eight or more cores that maximizes performance per core. watts to back up Mosaic’s bold efficiency claims.
Mosaic also claims to remove original design manufacturer (ODM) complexity, shipping its chips with a complete application layer developed and maintained by the startup.
While the company has already achieved “meaningful revenue” through NRE contracts with ODM partners, future plans revolve around much more than being a chip provider. This startup has big visions of becoming a platform provider where applications are developed specifically for its silicon.
“The next billion smart devices will see and understand the world around them,” commented Antonia Albert, an investor with leading Swiss pre-seed fund Founderful. “Mosaic SoC’s product is the chip that makes it possible at scale.”
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