Nuvoton will satisfy the needs of public infrastructure and industrial sites with AI MCUs that simultaneously satisfy security and convenience.

Nuvoton held a press conference at the Westin Seoul Parnas on the 24th and introduced the M55M1 100 GOPS AI MCU for edge AI acceleration.

Nuvoton Technology Korea President Ahn Jeong-mo, who gave the opening remarks, introduced the company by saying, “Nuvoton Technology Corporation, a semiconductor company headquartered in Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Park, is further solidifying its position in the global market.”

Established in 2008 as a spin-off from Minbond Corporation, Nuvoton currently has approximately 3,700 employees and a capital of approximately NT$4.1 billion. Since being listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in 2010, the company has significantly expanded its business scope through the acquisition of Japan's Panasonic Semiconductor.

Nuvoton operates eight business groups: microcontrollers (MCU) and audio, cloud security, components, visual sensing, batteries and automotive, power electronics, and high-power lasers.

In particular, we are accelerating the development of AI technologies based on MCU and MPU platforms, which are expected to be utilized in various fields such as smart homes, autonomous vehicles, and industrial automation in the future.

Currently, Nuvoton's main sales division is the automotive sector, accounting for 38%, followed by computing at 26%, communications at 21%, and consumer electronics at 15%.

“AI-based MCUs can control home appliances with voice even without an internet connection, satisfying both security and convenience,” said Ahn Jung-mo, CEO of Nuvoton Korea. “In the future, their application will expand to public infrastructure and industrial sites.”


Next, Hsieh Hsin-Chin, Nuvoton Product Marketing Manager, gave a detailed introduction to the M55M1 AI MCU with the topic, “Endpoint AI Innovation: 100x AI Performance on MCUs.”

The ShenZhen manager has installed the AI model on a small MCU, so it can be used without an internet connection. We introduced solutions that can implement various smart functions.

The first representative example introduced is a voice-based light control system.

Light switches that were previously operated manually can now be automatically controlled by saying “Turn off the living room lights” in the bedroom using an AI voice model.

This system operates without an internet connection and is highly secure as the user's voice is not transmitted to an external server.

This is a representative example showing the potential of AI MCU utilization in the consumer electronics industry.

AI MCUs are also widely used in public infrastructure and industrial settings.

For example, by embedding AI models in control panels within a factory, operational efficiency can be maximized by automatically sending repair requests when a part's lifespan reaches 80%. This greatly helps reduce unnecessary downtime in production lines and lower maintenance costs.

Xie Xinz Manager said that Nuvoton's AI MCU can be connected to various sensors such as microphones, cameras, and infrared sensors, and through this, it can implement complex AI functions such as facial recognition, object recognition, keyword detection, and biosignal analysis.

In the medical field in particular, a method of analyzing blood pressure or blood oxygen concentration data and applying it to an automated system within a hospital was also proposed.

The M55M1 AI MCU introduced by the Xinz Manager is equipped with an ArmⓇ CortexⓇ-M55 CPU and Ethos-U55 NPU, enabling high-performance AI inference that is up to 100 times better than existing ones even in an environment with only a few MB of memory.

Additionally, the development environment maintains the same ecosystem as existing MCUs, while simplifying complex processes through AI development tools to increase accessibility for developers.

Nuvoton's AI MCU is designed to consume half the power of existing MCUs despite its high performance. It is suitable for IoT devices and battery-based equipment, satisfying both energy efficiency and sustainability.

Nuvoton goes beyond a single product and provides a software development kit (SDK) optimized for AI MCUs along with various application scenarios.

This allows customers to freely select and apply AI features that fit their products, and also expand AI features to existing product lines.

“Nuboton is leading technological innovation in various fields such as smart home, autonomous driving, industrial automation, and healthcare through AI MCU,” said Xie Shinz, manager. “This technology, which satisfies stability, security, low power, and high performance at the same time, is expected to have a great impact in the global market in the future.”