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Anker made its own chip to bring AI to all its products

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Re: Anker made its own chip to bring AI to all its products

#41

Post by senectus1 »

ssl-3 wrote: post #25
55555 wrote: post #2

Literally had no idea they actually made tech. I thought they just private labelled charging cables and sold them on Amazon.

They've been first at a few things. For instance: Back in the Bad, Old Days, charging phones (especially smart phones) wasn't quite as simple as today. The aftermarket cables were shit. Brands came and went overnight (they still do, but they did then too), and even if a person eventually found some cables that worked then it was hard to get more of them later. The aftermarket charging bricks were shit. I had some tha…

I've just had 30kwh of their battery system installed. its working very nicely so far.. the Anker Solix X1

Re: Anker made its own chip to bring AI to all its products

#42

Post by SyneRyder »

gib444 wrote: post #35
SyneRyder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love my Anker chargers. I like them even better than my Apple chargers now. Liked their wireless phone charger too, though the blue light on that was excessively bright. I have lots of Anker USB cables, no problems with them. Didn't know they made Eufy. That would make me highly consider Eufy for anything.

What is there to "love" about an Anker charger out of curiosity (or, well, any charger)?

Aside from that everything just works, and it has multiple ports (2 USB-C + 1 USB-A) & that build quality seems excellent... the Anker chargers I use are really small, highly portable, and they have a straight up-down design. I'm using the Nano II 65W and the 737 GaNPrime 120W.

Something like the Apple MacBook chargers assumes there's lots of space below the power outlet for the charger to hang down. But often that isn't the case in a cafe, or sometimes even an airport, where the power outlet is almost level with the base of the desk you're working at. In those cases, you can't plug a MacBook charger in directly. You could use an extension power cord, but that means you're now carrying extra cables.

With the Anker models I have, I just carry the charger itself and a short USB-C cable. The charger and cable fit into the zipper section of a small Lacdo USB Flash Drive Case I carry with me, so I have my charger & cables & USB sticks all in one small case. I usually take the 65W Nano II, which only has enough wattage for my laptop. But if I use the 737, I can charge my laptop and also charge my phone, plus maybe a Pebble watch while working.

And this is all in the size of something that's maybe half as big as my old Apple MacBook power bricks and their single USB port.

I did like how the Apple chargers had interchangeable heads for traveling overseas though. You can't do that on the Anker chargers. But the Anker ones do support international voltage, so you only need to plug a prong adapter on the end, no step-down converter or anything. I can fit an adapter for one country into my Lacdo case as well. It's nice to be able to grab just the one case and run out to the cafe when traveling.

Re: Anker made its own chip to bring AI to all its products

#43

Post by nearbuy »

fxtentacle wrote: post #28

It's basically a DSP for noise cancellation. They just call it AI because, presumably, that'll increase their stock price.

It's not entirely clear from the article but it sounds like Thus is either this chip or a series of chips that run low power neural nets with millions of parameters and they intend to use them for other applications in IoT devices.

It's a pretty central example of what we traditionally called AI before the term started being mostly used for LLMs.

Re: Anker made its own chip to bring AI to all its products

#44

Post by amitp »

dpoloncsak wrote: post #34
thejazzman wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eufy was uploading the thumbnails to S3, if I recall correctly, so that they could be delivered in push notifications

This sounds right? All I can find is an LTT video on the topic and I'm not in a place to watch a video at the moment

I found https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_rAXF_btvE to be more balanced than the LTT video, but I think it mostly depends on your expectations of the cameras. The videos themselves are stored locally, not in the cloud. But if you have thumbnails turned on in the notifications, then the thumbnails have to be stored somewhere temporarily (I think this is an Apple/Google requirement), and they're being stored on a cloud server rather than in your home network (which would require opening up a port).

Re: Anker made its own chip to bring AI to all its products

#45

Post by ssl-3 »

gib444 wrote: post #35
SyneRyder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love my Anker chargers. I like them even better than my Apple chargers now. Liked their wireless phone charger too, though the blue light on that was excessively bright. I have lots of Anker USB cables, no problems with them. Didn't know they made Eufy. That would make me highly consider Eufy for anything.

What is there to "love" about an Anker charger out of curiosity (or, well, any charger)?

I've been using the same Anker charger brick since 2014. It was $13.99, delivered.

It has two USB A ports. It has always charged everything at a good rate, regardless of brand, model, or age. It's reasonably-compact, the prongs (it's made for US plugs) fold for convenience when traveling, and it is UL listed.

Its present duty includes keeping an iPad running 24x7 and also charging my phone every night. It has charged my phone many thousands of times so far.

I'd update it to something newer, with USB C and USB PD and the bee's knees, but this old Anker thing is exactly the right kind of consistent and boring.

I don't think about it much because it has given me no reason to think about it.

That kind of boring behavior is remarkable, I think. So many other charging bricks I've used were just trash to use (slow or fickle, causing me to waste time with a USB power analyzer before giving up), or they died prematurely.

Same with the powered Anker USB 3.0 hubs on my desk. Those have only seen about 5 years of continuous use but so far they've been resolute in their trouble-free performance.

This stuff seems to be very much buy-once, cry-never.

Re: Anker made its own chip to bring AI to all its products

#46

Post by KetoManx64 »

SyneRyder wrote: post #20
echelon wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anker is a powerhouse and they've grown huge. Best chargers on the market, hands down. Best cables too. But they've gone into high end stuff. They make the Eufy brand of LiDAR smart vacuums for instance. All done in house, and consistently in the top rankings against market leaders like Roborock and Dreame. They're killing it. They're doing home security systems, and all sorts of stuff under the Eufy brand.

Love my Anker chargers. I like them even better than my Apple chargers now. Liked their wireless phone charger too, though the blue light on that was excessively bright. I have lots of Anker USB cables, no problems with them. Didn't know they made Eufy. That would make me highly consider Eufy for anything.

I have 3 of their wireless chargers, in both black and white and ended up covering the LED with electrical tape on each one. Way too bright

Re: Anker made its own chip to bring AI to all its products

#47

Post by SyneRyder »

KetoManx64 wrote: post #46
SyneRyder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love my Anker chargers. I like them even better than my Apple chargers now. Liked their wireless phone charger too, though the blue light on that was excessively bright. I have lots of Anker USB cables, no problems with them. Didn't know they made Eufy. That would make me highly consider Eufy for anything.

I have 3 of their wireless chargers, in both black and white and ended up covering the LED with electrical tape on each one. Way too bright

Same. I ended up getting something called "FLANCCI LED Light Blocking Stickers" on Amazon that had some 80% light blocking circles that were just the right size. The brightness is definitely a design flaw, Anker should work on that (and maybe have the color change when charging is at 100% too).

Re: Anker made its own chip to bring AI to all its products

#48

Post by 28304283409234 »

Aurornis wrote: post #12
BeetleB wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They make a lot of not-top-tier products. The products are usually quite good, but not the best. They're often the best value . (Very happy with my $60 Anker earbuds).

Anker is a brand where buying a product feels like pulling the lever on a slot machine. I'm either going to get a product that works great and I love it, or it's going to feel half-baked and fail early.

This. I bought two Anker laptop chargers and both died died within weeks. Not a fan.

Re: Anker made its own chip to bring AI to all its products

#49

Post by echelon »

recursive wrote: post #38
echelon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is polarizing. The rest of the world outside of the US and Europe loves AI. China is embracing it fully. Why is our Western media making the public hate it so much? It's almost as if it's a top down edict from all the news giants to constantly dump on AI and make it sound like it'll kill you. If we maintain this view, we're going to get steamrolled. And we'll have deserved it.

It kind of seems the opposite to me. I'm seeing so much marketing budget and and positive media exposure. It's the people that don't like it because of what it is and what it represents.

I would love to see this supposed "positive media exposure".

All I see are doom and gloom forecasts, "bubble" talk, and how bad it is for the environment.

Re: Anker made its own chip to bring AI to all its products

#50

Post by fxtentacle »

nearbuy wrote: post #43
fxtentacle wrote: post #28

It's basically a DSP for noise cancellation. They just call it AI because, presumably, that'll increase their stock price.

It's not entirely clear from the article but it sounds like Thus is either this chip or a series of chips that run low power neural nets with millions of parameters and they intend to use them for other applications in IoT devices. It's a pretty central example of what we traditionally called AI before the term started being mostly used for LLMs.

If you look into ProTools hardware accelerator cards from 20 years ago, they were shock full with Sharc DSP chips, which are optimized for convolution and multiply add.

Technically, AI Lora is surprisingly similar to how fake echo based on reverb IRs works in real time audio processing.

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