Himax to Integrate WiseEye™ with NVIDIA TAO to Advance AI Vision Deployment in a Robust Ecosystem

Empowering On-Device, Ultralow-Power Endpoint AI with Enterprise-Ready, Pretrained Models, Low-Code Capabilities, Custom Optimization, and Efficient Deployment Tools


TAINAN, Taiwan, June 03, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Himax Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: HIMX) (“Himax” or “Company”), a leading supplier and fabless manufacturer of display drivers and other semiconductor products, today announced it is integrating its advanced WiseEye™ Ultralow Power AI Sensing solution with the powerful NVIDIA TAO platform to enable enterprise-ready intelligent AI capabilities and streamline on-device AI deployment for battery-powered devices.

WiseEye™ seamlessly integrates Himax’s proprietary ultralow power AI processors, always-on CMOS image sensors, and advanced CNN-based AI algorithms, revolutionizing battery-powered, on-device vision AI applications. With power consumption of just a few milliwatts, WiseEye™ targets battery-powered endpoint AI device markets to drive AI for everyday life. Such devices typically demand extended battery life to minimize maintenance and enhance usability. WiseEye™ delivers intuitive and intelligent user interactions, making advanced AI sensing possible even in power-constrained environments. By bringing advanced, user-friendly AI capabilities, WiseEye™ sets a new standard for endpoint AI, offering unmatched performance and extended operational lifetimes.

Himax’s collaboration with NVIDIA empowers developers with AI-accelerated capabilities through the WiseEye module, Himax's proprietary evaluation kits, and third-party development boards powered by WiseEye™ AI. Developers can quickly democratize their end-point AI applications with these cost-efficient, production-ready modules, while gaining access to a professional, efficient training platform through NVIDIA TAO, facilitating the development of enterprise-ready AI models. NVIDIA TAO offers an API-driven workflow that leverages a collection of pretrained models and transfer learning to enable users to build custom AI models with ease. It simplifies AI development with no-code or low-code capabilities, allowing for fine-tuning of models for specific use cases. Additionally, NVIDIA TAO offers tools to optimize and quantize deep learning models for deployment on resource-constrained endpoint devices, including those with the WiseEye AI processor integrated. These tools reduce model size and ensure efficient performance in real-world scenarios. Seeed Studio, a key partner in the WiseEye ecosystem, provides a real case illustration of this collaboration through its SenseCraft toolkit, which enables the seamless conversion of NVIDIA TAO-trained object detection and classification models for no-code deployment on the WiseEye platform. It also packages these models with firmware, ensuring compatibility and interoperability with popular development boards like Seeed Xiao, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and ESP32. Seeed Studio’s solutions have already proven effective in the market, facilitating successful AI implementation for customers.

“We are thrilled to work with NVIDIA on this collaboration that merges the power of NVIDIA TAO with Himax's industry-leading WiseEye™ Ultralow Power AI Sensing solution. Himax is helping shape the future by streamlining AI development to facilitate quicker time-to-market, ushering in a new era of on-device AI with ultralow power consumption, and marking a significant leap forward in the industry,” said Mark Chen, Vice President of Smart Sensing Business at Himax.

About Himax Technologies, Inc.

Himax Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: HIMX) is a leading global fabless semiconductor solution provider dedicated to display imaging processing technologies. The Company’s display driver ICs and timing controllers have been adopted at scale across multiple industries worldwide including TVs, PC monitors, laptops, mobile phones, tablets, automotive, ePaper devices and industrial displays, among others. As the global market share leader in automotive display technology, the Company offers innovative and comprehensive automotive IC solutions, including traditional driver ICs, advanced in-cell Touch and Display Driver Integration (TDDI), local dimming timing controllers (Local Dimming Tcon), Large Touch and Display Driver Integration (LTDI) and OLED display technologies. Himax is also a pioneer in tinyML visual-AI and optical technology-related fields. The Company’s industry-leading WiseEye™ Ultralow Power AI Sensing technology which incorporates Himax proprietary ultralow power AI processor, always-on CMOS image sensor, and CNN-based AI algorithm has been widely deployed in consumer electronics and AIoT-related applications. Himax optics technologies, such as diffractive wafer level optics, LCoS microdisplays and 3D sensing solutions, are critical for facilitating emerging AR/VR/metaverse technologies. Additionally, Himax designs and provides touch controllers, OLED ICs, LED ICs, EPD ICs, power management ICs, and CMOS image sensors for diverse display application coverage. Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Tainan, Taiwan, Himax currently employs around 2,200 people from three Taiwan-based offices in Tainan, Hsinchu and Taipei and country offices in China, Korea, Japan, Germany, and the US. Himax has 2,772 patents granted and 398 patents pending approval worldwide as of March 31, 2024.

http://www.himax.com.tw

Forward Looking Statements

Factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those described in this conference call include, but are not limited to, the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Company’s business; general business and economic conditions and the state of the semiconductor industry; market acceptance and competitiveness of the driver and non-driver products developed by the Company; demand for end-use applications products; reliance on a small group of principal customers; the uncertainty of continued success in technological innovations; our ability to develop and protect our intellectual property; pricing pressures including declines in average selling prices; changes in customer order patterns; changes in estimated full-year effective tax rate; shortage in supply of key components; changes in environmental laws and regulations; changes in export license regulated by Export Administration Regulations (EAR); exchange rate fluctuations; regulatory approvals for further investments in our subsidiaries; our ability to collect accounts receivable and manage inventory and other risks described from time to time in the Company's SEC filings, including those risks identified in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in its Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2023 filed with the SEC, as may be amended.

Company Contacts:

Eric Li, Chief IR/PR Officer
Himax Technologies, Inc.
Tel: +886-6-505-0880
Fax: +886-2-2314-0877
Email: hx_ir@himax.com.tw
www.himax.com.tw

Karen Tiao, Investor Relations
Himax Technologies, Inc.
Tel: +886-2-2370-3999
Fax: +886-2-2314-0877
Email: hx_ir@himax.com.tw
www.himax.com.tw

Mark Schwalenberg, Director
Investor Relations - US Representative
MZ North America
Tel: +1-312-261-6430
Email: HIMX@mzgroup.us
www.mzgroup.us