Amazon recently took an unusual move by inviting more than a dozen science and technology industry reporters to the mysterious Lab126 - this is Amazon's customer hardware development department. The purpose of this move seems to be to announce the entire industry, it has already Get ready for anyone to quickly develop any Alexa device you can imagine.
The intelligent voice interface is arguably the first time Amazon has succeeded on the client device. Its Kindle e-book reader reached the highest point of the e-book market early on, and its Fire tablet and smart phone can be said to have been out of the game. .
In the previous generation of operating system (OS) battlefields, Windows won personal computers (PCs), Apple (AAPL) and Google in the smart phone field. Amazon is optimistic about the next battlefield is the voice user interface, and Alexa will be The entire world absorbs its huge data center. Google, China's Alibaba and Baidu, and many other companies have begun chasing such a similar dream.
Amazon now supports nearly a hundred third-party Alexa products, ranging from light switches and thermostats, to smoke detectors, HP notebooks and cars, etc. It provides hardware reference designs from 10 semiconductor companies, and Two of their own designs have sold thousands of units since October 2016. In total, millions of Alexa systems have been sold in 11 countries worldwide.
“The growth rate in this area is really amazing. They come from a variety of amazing pipelines... Many products with different form factors have emerged one after another – it's really exciting, 'it was only about six months ago.' Amazon, Pete Thompson, who leads Amazon Voice Services to more partner products, said, 'I have participated in many developer networks, but you never know what will happen (products).'
The latest is Eufy Genie, a smart Alexa speaker that controls home appliances. Thompson proudly says that it took only 7 months to launch this product from its first meeting with a start-up company. .
Thompson said: "The hardware sector has been developing extremely rapidly. We have also continued to try to find out from the process the elements that can accelerate our progress." Thompson once led Microsoft's development of a touch-sensitive desktop computer, which is the most original Surface of the two-in-one electricity, about the same time as the Apple iPhone launched.
'There was no one who was optimistic about a device design that only uses a touch interface. Now, it is already a natural part of our lives,' he said. The next big thing is to allow users to give orders to computers around them.
Matt Wood, general manager of Amazon Artificial Intelligence, once said in an interview that this concept came from the TV album Star Trek and was further developed through its original Amazon Echo. In fact, Amazon is developing One of the four awakened words approved by the product includes: 'Star Trek, Command Computer!'
AI acceleration is under development
Amazon believes that the company currently has complete cloud APIs, reference designs, developer kits, modules, and ODM tools. It also provides engineering services that can assist OEMs in selecting hardware, improving user experience, and performing performance tests.
Basically, the technology or development products owned by the Amazon design team will be provided to third parties. Thompson said that some companies still need 'some set of tools', such as Alexa call/voice service, and devices equipped with monitors.
Chip makers that support the Alexa reference design include Cirrus Logic, Intel, MediaTek, NXP, Qualcomm, Synaptics, Texas Instruments and Xmos. Compared to the ARM core and standalone DSP, some companies prefer SoC, then Allwinner and Amlogic provide chips and designs.
Their products cover designs that support beamforming, ranging from 360-degree ranges across eight microphones to unidirectional microphones. Amazon also worked with Amlogic to remove GPUs and HDMI blocks from existing designs to lower Cost to create a dedicated audio chip.
Amazon also worked with the transducer company to produce smaller, better-quality loudspeakers. It also developed microphone protection technology that is immune to interference from smart speakers playing music.
Chris Hagler, hardware director of Amazon's Alexa development team, said: 'We will also design a large number of audio and low-cost products.' This core Alexa development team once developed the first Echo product.
However, there has not been any logic element designed to accelerate machine learning so far.
'This is a good idea,' Hagler jokingly said, but he did not disclose when and what kind of client-side artificial intelligence (AI) acceleration details Amazon plans to provide.
'We are designing and developing lower power and lower cost devices. Therefore, supporting the accelerator is very important - some may use the DSP and may add more functional blocks. We want it to be as low as possible. Consumption, although it is currently not possible to import into our architecture, it does have initial thoughts.
Compilation: Susan Hong