Untether AI Drives the Agricultural Revolution with Energy-Efficient AI Acceleration at the Edge

Barchart · 10/17 12:00

Untether AI®, the leader in energy-centric AI acceleration technology, is at the forefront of transforming agriculture with edge-optimized solutions that address critical challenges like labor shortages and inefficient resource use. As AI reshapes the farming practices, Untether AI is delivering cutting-edge solutions that significantly improve productivity and sustainability, ensuring the future of agriculture.

Accelerating the Future of Agriculture

Untether AI is disrupting the agricultural technology landscape delivering best-in-class AI acceleration solutions that power advanced vision-based equipment for precision farming. These solutions help with tasks such as crop monitoring, weeding, identifying pests or diseases, automating harvesting processes, and optimizing irrigation. While AI holds enormous potential in AgTech, traditional GPU-based solutions are often prohibitively expensive, with high ongoing operational costs. Untether AI’s speedAI® 240 Slim breaks these barriers offering edge-optimized AI acceleration that is both practical and scalable, allowing farmers to embrace the future of farming with efficient, high-performance AI solutions.

“At Untether AI, we believe that AI is not just a technology advancement; it is a force that will redefine the agricultural landscape,” said Chris Walker, CEO Untether AI. “Our speedAI family of AI accelerators has the best performance, power and accuracy giving AgTech equipment designers the essential capabilities to maximize farm equipment efficiency and effectiveness; reducing upfront and operational costs, making sustainable practices viable.”

Overcoming the Limitations of Current Solutions

Most AgTech solutions rely on GPU-based solutions – originally designed for gaming—which are costly, inefficient, and power-hungry—making them impractical for real-world agriculture. For example, laser weeders intended to replace harmful chemicals are expensive due to the need for multiple GPUs, pushing farmers back to chemical solutions. Untether AI's state-of-the-art speedAI240 Slim AI accelerator card employs a novel At-Memory compute architecture, delivers superior performance and low latency at a fraction of the cost and energy, making AI-powered AgTech viable and efficient.

Centralized Architecture: A New Paradigm for AgTech

Just as the automotive industry embraced centralized architectures for efficiency, agriculture is now poised to shift away from complex, inefficient GPU-powered distributed systems toward more streamlined centralized solutions. Untether AI is pioneering an open-source platform that leverages a centralized architecture to enhance reliability, reduce costs, and simplify maintenance. By moving away from power hungry, expensive GPU-centric models, Untether AI’s accelerators enabled advanced AI capabilities, driving both productivity and sustainability in agricultural operations.

Energy Efficiency Meets Performance

The key to advancing AI in agriculture lies in vision-based precision and faster decision-making with high accuracy. Untether AI’s speedAI240 Slim empowers farmers with cutting-edge AI capabilities that streamline operations, such as weeding, by identifying smaller weeds more efficiently and conserving resources. Its powerful 2000 Tera Operations Per Second (TOPs) performance, combined with a 75-watt power consumption, drastically reduces system costs and complexity by replacing multiple GPUs with a single device, enhancing overall reliability.

With the recent publication of MLPerf® Inference v4.1 benchmarks, Untether AI has solidified its leadership in AI performance, demonstrating a 6X improvement in energy efficiency and 3X lower latency. These results highlight the speedAI240 Slim’s ability to deliver unmatched AI compute power for agricultural robotics, leading to faster returns on investment through reduced operational costs and greater productivity.

“Untether AI’s speedAI240 Slim AI Inference accelerator card brings the power of data center performance to edge and near-edge applications, making it a great fit for our edge server product family,” said Andrew Woollard, CTO of J-Squared Technologies, an Untether AI partner. “We look forward to exploiting the advancements in high-speed data bandwidth and higher TOPs performance-per-watt as we continue to build state-of-the-art systems and support next-gen AI applications.”

A Vision for Sustainable Agriculture

Untether AI envisions AI as a driving force for sustainable farming, tackling challenges like labor shortages and resource inefficiencies. By delivering edge-optimized AI solutions—not outdated, GPU-based technologies—Untether AI is unlocking productivity while promoting sustainability. This translates to more efficient farming, reduced chemical use, healthier crops, and ultimately, a more profitable and sustainable future for farmers.

“Western Growers’ mission is to enhance the competitiveness and profitability of our members. We're excited to see new vendors like Untether AI attending this year's FIRA USA event to accelerate the innovation of AI for the AgTech industry,” says Walt Duflock VP of Innovation at Western Growers.

Join Us at FIRA 2024

As we continue to drive innovation in AgTech, we invite you to visit our booth #D9, Exhibition Zone 2 at FIRA 2024.

About Untether AI

Untether AI® provides energy-centric AI inference acceleration from the edge to the cloud, supporting any type of neural network model. With its At-Memory compute architecture, Untether AI has solved the data movement bottleneck that costs energy and performance in traditional CPUs and GPUs, resulting in high-performance, low-latency neural network inference acceleration without sacrificing accuracy. Untether AI embodies its technology speedAI® devices, acceleration cards, and its imAgine® Software Development Kit. More information can be found at www.untether.ai.