Anker launches new SoC chip for powerful wearable AI

To hear some of the most vocal AI proponents, these systems are going to solve every problem known to man and usher in a new utopian era. Although the reality is a little less transformative, there’s no denying that AI is capable of some remarkable feats – when we put enough processing power behind it, anyway. But now Anker is trying to show us that even devices with limited resources can take advantage, as it introduces its new AI chip solution.

Wireless earbuds seem like one of the most challenging potential targets for on-device AI: They’re physically compact, with not a lot of room for a large battery; They live right above our skin, so it would be very uncomfortable if they overheated; And they don’t have a reliable, high-bandwidth data connection to be able to rely on cloud AI assistance. But don’t tell that to Anker, because this product line is exactly where the company’s next-generation AI plans began.

The core of Anker’s efforts is what it calls this: an AI chip platform designed to meet these types of challenging requirements. The chip’s biggest trick exists at the silicon level: a design called compute-in-memory that allows the processor to operate directly on data, without the usual overhead of moving data in and out of memory — an operation that Anker says can account for more than 90% of the power consumed by other solutions.

Anker hasn’t yet shared the full details behind its inaugural pair of thus-equipped earbuds, but the company plans to announce them in just a month on Anker Day – May 21st. One early feature it’s ready to preview is called Clear Calls, a larger neural network-based environmental noise cancellation (ENC) system designed to selectively filter out background noise for better call fidelity than we’d get with basic algorithms or simple AI. Thus between the chip’s processing capabilities and a sensor array consisting of eight MEMS microphones and two bone-conduction pickups, Anker is expected to offer some of the best-in-class ENCs.

That sounds absolutely impressive in itself, but for Anker, those earbuds seem largely like a proof of concept — and the company has been clear that its interest in deploying chips like this for on-device AI is just beginning. Over the next few years, expect to see the chips emerging in all corners of the Anker ecosystem, from more SoundCore audio gear to the rest of Anker’s mobile accessories.