Intelligence Boosting Engine (IBE): a Hardware Accelerator for Processing Sensor Fusion and Machine Learning Algorithm for a Sensor Hub SoC

This paper proposes a hardware accelerator, named IBE (Intelligence Boost Engine), to process both sensor fusion and machine learning algorithms for the Standing-egg SLH200 sensor hub SoC. The IBE is designed to have both efficiency and flexibility to support various emerging applications for future sensor hub SoCs in addition to the sensor fusion and machine learning algorithm (SVM) which are the target applications of the SLH200. With regard to the SLH200 SoC, the IBE was fabricated in the Global Foundry 55nm process, and the performance and power evaluation with IBE have been performed with the evaluation board of the SLH200 SoC. The evaluation results show that the proposed IBE can achieve up to 31.3x faster speed for target kernel operation and 4x faster speed for the target application (SVM polynomial). It reduces the energy consumption up to 75% as well.