By Richard Lu, Assistant General Manager of AIOT Business Unit at MediaTek
The biggest change in IoT is a shift of data processing from cloud to the edge. This is happening hand-in-hand with the rapid advancements in Artificial Intelligence, which is reforming almost every industry in the world, including IoT. As edge devices are becoming more capable they are embracing AI processing, which has created the flourishing AIoT industry. These allow more nuanced devices that offer a number of benefits such as:
- Faster response times: Processing information locally on a device, rather than sending information to the cloud, reduces lag time for a better user experience.
- Growing demand for user privacy and data protection: Users are sharing more and more information with their devices, making privacy and data protection more of a concern. Edge AI processing minimizes security risks by keeping information on a device, instead of sending it back and forth to the cloud.
- Need for ubiquitous function availability: Edge AI allows consumers to use smart functions on their devices even when they are not connected to the Internet.
- Ease connection requirements: Statista predicts that by 2025 there will be over 75 billion IoT devices installed worldwide. This continuous growth of data created by Internet-connected devices has been posing a challenge for network infrastructure; processing information at the edge reduces the burden on networks.
- Situational or environmental awareness: Enabling each device to make decisions in real-time based on what’s happening around them. For example, building management services that react to different hotspots of temperature and humidity, or smart cities where traffic signals react to changes in traffic flows, or street lights that act according to local brightness or the presence of people.
MediaTek is one of the few companies globally that is enabling true AIoT devices thanks to its unique capability in highly energy efficient, high performance SoCs, its development of an industry-leading AI processor for embedded devices and its unmatched global ecosystem of partners.
MediaTek has created commercial-grade, reference design AIoT platforms for verticals such as smart fitness, home appliances, smart retail, Fintech, warehousing and more in order to give anyone from new brands and startups to large Enterprises a springboard into product creation, accelerating development time. MediaTek even meets industrial-grade requirements for wide temperate ranges, wide power input and longevity supply.
It’s easier than ever to get a new idea off the ground. Simply start with one of the ‘Pumpkin’ hardware development kits, choose from the wide range of peripheral add-ons, connectivity and variety of software stack. From there, product developers can then embrace MediaTek’s huge AIoT partner ecosystem than includes a range of global ODMs, IDHs, design services and much more, driving a design as far as desired.
Learn More about MediaTek AIoT opportunities.
