NUMEM INC. — National Aeronautics and Space Administration SBIR Phase I: H6

Description

New Space Directive has opened up new challenges and opportunities in AI applications. Numem aims to augment NASArsquo;s High-Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) program with design of radiation hardened amp; ultra-low power DNN Co-processor to enable AI applications.There is exponential increase in the use of sensors. These sensors and connected devices generate zettabytes of data per year. Machine learning with DNN capability is needed to extract meaningful and actionable information from this data. For some applications, the goal is to take immediate action based the data such as in robotics/drones, self-driving cars, smart Internet of Things whereas in other applications, the goal is to analyze and understand the data to identify trends as in case ofnbsp; surveillance, portable/wearable electronics.This radiation hardened Co-Processor will solidify HSPC avionics ecosystem with robust AI capabilities much needed for space autonomy, small sat constellations/autonomous science, human explorations and operations Habitat and deep space missions. On-board AI processing can enable spacecraft to efficiently process large volumes of raw sensor-data into scientific knowledge or actionable data to overcome limitations in downlink communication. On-board artificial intelligence can also enable spacecraft to formulate decisions for critical operations. Commercial applicationsThis AI core comprises of reconfigurable DNN Engine with multiple compute units which can support multiple DNN models and sizes. Embedded STT-MRAM Memory which is 1000X high performance compared to FLASH memory and improves the silicon area by 2X to 3X compared to SRAM and reduces the standby-power by about 5X with radiation tolerant memory cell.This robust solution is crafted for low power machine vision, autonomous vehicles, facial recognition, healthcare, real-time tracking, agriculture, manufacturing.nbsp; Radiation tolerant memory technology is ideal fit for space qualifications.