The AI specialist VeriSilicon has released the latest version of its Vivante VIP Neural Network engine. The VIP9000 is a customizable processor built specifically for artificial intelligence and computer vision, and is compatible with a range of different data sets and computing platforms.

VeriSilicon is pitching the solution as a Silicon-Platform-as-a-Service (SiPaaS), and argues that the VIP9000 is ideal for a wide variety of AIoT applications, including wearable devices, surveillance cameras, smart home appliances, edge servers, and self-driving cars.

“Neural Network technology is continuing to evolve and there are so many applications when it comes to computer vision, pixel processing, and audio and voice processing,” said VeriSilicon Executive VP and Intellectual Property GM Wei-Jin Dai.

The VIP9000’s most notable new features are its support for FLEXA API and the Bfloat16 data format, as well as a more flexible data distributor. It also delivers task-specific engines that will optimize facial recognition, voice recognition, and other common AI functions.

According to Dai, VeriSilicon’s technology has already been adopted by companies like Broadcom and NXP, the latter of which recently teamed up with Microsoft to develop new edge processing solutions. In 2018, Samsung also released a processor with an eye towards facial recognition.