Inuitive’s NU4100 Targets 3D Sensing

Israeli startup Inuitive has released the NU4100 chip for 3D image processing. Incorporating the company's image-processing accelerators and technology from Arm and Synopsys, the chip targets autonomous machines, AR/VR, and the smarthome market.

Anand Joshi

In the AI chip world, sometimes it's best to focus on your strengths and leave the rest to others. Israeli startup Inuitive is doing just that with its 3D-processing chip. The company’s NU4100 incorporates proprietary technology for only image and 3D processing and employs an Arc EV72 core licensed from Synopsys for all other AI and vision processing. The result is a chip targeting autonomous machines, AR/VR, and the smart-home market.

Founded in 2012, Inuitive has raised more than $24 million in three funding rounds according to Crunchbase. Investors include Germany-based Deutsche Telekom Strategic Investments. The NU4100 is Inuitive’s third-generation chip and follows the NU4000 released in 2017.

The company has a development center in China and a sales office in the United States, with 150 employees worldwide. The company’s customers include Israel-based Shamir, which implements testers for lenses, China-based Sirius Robotics, and Japan-based Fukushin Electrics

The simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) computer-vision algorithm uses stereo cameras to map surroundings and fix a system’s location. Using the algorithm, robots navigate pathways, avoiding obstacles. To meet the constraints of this latency-bound operation, the NU4100 incorporates hardware acceleration and provides 3.2 TOPS of raw INT8 performance.