What is a smart home processor?
Before we delve into what a smart home processor is we need to understand the context of why it is required. Until recently Internet of Things (IoT) or connected devices were all the rage due to the ability of connecting remote devices around homes and businesses through wireless communication to help with everything from controlling lighting and heating controls, to security systems and food inventory analytics. The applications are huge however conventional IoT systems had a few challenges that needed re-imagining. One of the key issues however was that all devices were actively communicating between them increasing network activity and power usage while the secondary impact was providing a potential security risk.
Continuous communication based on a backend written by developers trying to rush a commercially competitive product to market meant that most products were using default passwords when shipped for the Linux operating system to only one maintenance password being used for each device. This made IoT a contentious subject a few years ago with many wanting all devices removed from key installations. As you can guess for security devices that consisted of cameras IoT was a potential privacy risk and still to this day there are still users that have no real security against cybercriminals.
A smart home processor provides a great way to prevent or reduce these issues through smarter more discrete systems that would only initiate communication when required. While IoT is similar to a group of people all talking at once, a smart home processor embedded system has only communications occurring when required while data processing happens on each device to reduce communication and power consumption requirements. AI drives what signals the need for communication, a security camera for instance will only notify the system of an intruder if the facial recognition software does not match a face with family members, pets or staff if used in a business scenario. This stops a whole host of annoying false alerts that were also a negative benefit for using IoT devices in the beginning; now users can be assured that when alerted it is not the family dog but an unidentifiable person.
The AI processor
A smart home process is designed to provide the best AI experience, replicating a neural network also known as a weighted decision-making matrix. Fundamentally AI processes sensor or input data through a series of filters with decision nodes at each of these layers containing a bias value that is appended to the decision. This bias is optimized through iterative training using sample data where the answer is known, and once the system can guess the results to within an error tolerance it is deemed acceptable. An AI processor needs to replicate the structure of these decision trees and process low level data quickly, as such they have similar attributes to GPUs however with the architecture replicating the neural network providing much quicker, real-time results.
A smart home chip additionally has an abstracted layer allowing software developers to either use and adapt an existing model or use SDK tools to quickly add common container-based environments quickly. This is highly useful for a company already creating a solution using containers in a team-based project and needs to quickly put this in a new product. A smart home chip can allow hardware to be quickly developed and optimized without having to worry about abstraction layers.
The future is here
A smart home chip is currently a key component for projects that need to be quickly taken to market to ensure developers do not lose market share to competitors. Not only is the hardware the most performant solution, but also the SDK tools for crashing development times. A smart home chip can be utilized currently as a surface mount solution, as part of an expansion card using micro-PCIe architecture or M.2 architecture, or as a prepackaged boxed solution needing only I/O connected to it. No matter what you are doing, a smart home chip is the solution for you.
