MAXREFDES178#

MAXREFDES178# is a reference design for the MAX78000 ARM Cortex M4F microcontroller with two MAX78000 150K Weight AI Accelerator. It is intended to demonstrate MAX78000 capabilities and advantages over traditional microcontrollers suitable for AI at The Edge applications. MAXREFDES178# consists of multiple microcontrollers running custom firmware and one Android Application interacting with the MAX32666 microcontroller using BLE radio. User interaction can be done using the Android Application running on a mobile phone or tablet, also using the touch screen connected to the MAX32666 microcontroller. MAX32666 microcontroller as the main controller of MAXREFDES178# is responsible for power management, BLE and USB communication, audio output, monitoring MAX78000 microcontroller(s) power consumption, and feeding to/from data MAX78000 microcontroller for external interfaces. MAX32666 uses MAX78000-Audio and MAX78000-Video microcontrollers as computing resources but both MAX78000 microcontrollers have a direct microphone or image sensor connections so they both can capture the data they need to perform autonomously.

There are two MAX78000 microcontrollers in MAXREFDES178# and each of them is dedicated to special AI inference operations. Both MAX78000 microcontrollers are essentially identical in hardware but how they are programmed and how they are interfaced to other devices specifies their intended role in demonstrations. MAX78000-Audio has a digital microphone and a low-power audio codec, so it can be used for audio-oriented AI demonstrations. MAX78000-Video has a CMOS image sensor connected via a parallel camera interface and it is intended for still image AI demonstrations such as object recognition.

https://www.maximintegrated.com/products/MAXREFDES178