Trustworthy electronics (Trusted Hardware) is becoming increasingly important for the economy. The scientists of Duisburg-based Fraunhofer IMS have now succeeded in developing a powerful microcontroller core based on the free RISC-V instruction set architecture and its expansion to include hardware acceleration for AI applications. “Together with the AifES framework for embedded AI, we have therefore succeeded in producing a system for the use or artificial intelligence in sensor or actuator-related embedded systems,” explains Alexander Stanitzki of Fraunhofer IMS.

To protect the AI algorithms and learning data from IP theft, the chips can be equipped with firmware encryption; for communication, they offer hardware acceleration for the most popular encryption procedures. The chips will be available starting in the spring of 2020; integration into customized ASIC developments is already possible now. This also includes the option to expand the RISC-V core with special modules.