The demand for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms is ever increasing and this demand is fueled by the need to make everything ‘smart’ – from cities to cars and even consumer electronics such as refrigerators and television sets. However, the computational requirement for most of these algorithms is extremely complex, far beyond the capabilities of regular central processing unit (CPU) architectures.
For many years now, the semiconductor industry had been in a dormant state, but the advent of AI and ML algorithms has resulted in a colossal shift and for the first time in decades, spurred many entrepreneurs and scientists to rethink the fundamental architectures of these processors. This has resulted in a slew of startup companies across the globe with new ideas and computing architectures.
Spero Devices, Inc. is one such startup company that is aspiring to make it big in this space by developing a hardware accelerator platform for edge applications requiring real-time operations and mobile power budgets. Located in a small town about 40 miles to the west of Boston, MA the company has at its helm, Dr. Nihar Athreyas who is leading the revolution as their founding member and Chief Technology Officer.
Under his supervision, Spero Devices has been awarded multiple contracts from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) which is the research wing of the U.S. Department of Defense. Dr. Athreyas and his team were selected to develop novel computing architectures for accelerating algorithms for ML and AI applications.
Dr. Athreyas completed his schooling in Mysore, Karnataka and obtained a bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology in Bangalore, India which is affiliated with Visvesvaraya Technological University of Karnataka. He then proceeded to obtain his Master of Science degree and his Doctorate both in the field of Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2013 and 2018, respectively. Spero Devices, Inc.
was formed while Dr. Athreyas was pursuing his doctoral degree and the hardware accelerator platform being developed at the company is an extension of his doctoral dissertation. Dr. Athreyas has published scholarly research papers in multiple well-known conferences and prestigious journals. He is the co-inventor on multiple patents that have been assigned to Spero Devices, Inc. for commercialization. He is also on the editorial boards of various scientific journals and is also a member of the board of directors for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Enterprise Forum (MITEF).
At Spero Devices, Dr. Athreyas is now responsible for research, design and development of product architecture, corporate development and market strategy. He is also the lead scientist and engineer for multiple DARPA projects that are ongoing. His expertise is in processor design and development, design and simulation of analog and digital circuits and systems, nanotechnology device modeling, simulation and machine learning algorithms. Dr. Athreyas is considered to be one of the top people in this field and he hopes to take the company to new levels.