Winbond Electronics, a leading global supplier of semiconductor memory solutions, announced on February 3, 2021 that its low-power, high-performance LPDDR4X DRAM technology will power Flex Logix for demanding artificial intelligence (AI) applications such as object recognition. announced that it supports the latest breakthroughs in edge computing.

Winbond LPDDR4X chips are paired with Flex Logix's InferX(TM) X1 edge inference accelerator chip based on an innovative architecture with an array of reconfigurable Tensor processors. This provides higher throughput and lower latency compared to existing AI edge computing solutions at a lower cost when processing complex neural networking algorithms such as YOLOv3 and Full Accuracy Winograd.

“We chose the InferX(TM) X1 edge accelerator from Flex Logix because it had the highest throughput per dollar, which is critical to powering many mainstream applications,” said Winbond. DRAM Product Marketing Center Technology Executive Robert Chang said. “The price and performance advantages of using the Company LPDDR4X chips with InferX will help expand AI applications by bringing inference capabilities to the mass market.”

To support InferX(TM)X1's ultra-fast operation and achieve up to 7.5 TOPS while minimizing power consumption, Flex Logix is a 4Gbit LPDDR4X DRAM with a maximum data rate of 4267Mbps and a maximum clock rate of 2133MHz. Winbond's W66CQ2NQUAHJ is combined with this accelerator. To enable use in battery-powered systems and other power-constrained applications, the W66 series devices operate with a 1.8V/1.1V IO voltage and a 0.6V power supply. Power saving features including PASR (Partial Array Self-Refresh) are provided.

Winbond's LPDDR4X chips work with InferX(TM) X1 processors in Flex Logix half-height/half-length PCIe embedded processor boards for edge servers and gateways. The system takes advantage of architectural innovations by Flex Logix, such as a reconfigurable optimized data path that reduces traffic between the processor and DRAM for higher throughput and lower latency.

Dana McCarty, VP of AI Inference Products Sales and Marketing, Flex Logix, said: “The combination of the unparalleled InferX(TM) X1 processor and Winbond’s high-bandwidth LPDDR4X chips sets a new benchmark for edge AI performance. “We will be able to implement networking algorithms to achieve high accuracy in object detection and image recognition, even when processing data-rich high-definition video streams.”

The 4Gbit W66CQ2NQUAHJ consists of two 2Gbit dies with two channels. Each die is organized into eight internal banks to support simultaneous operation. The chip is housed in a 10mm x 14.5mm 200-ball WFBGA package.