MEC signs a Joint Research Agreement with Japanese firm in Field Programmable Gate Arrays

NEW DELHI, APRIL 1: Mahindra Ecole Centrale, Hyderabad announced the signing of a Joint Research agreement with GROUND Inc. The research will focus on the application of AI Semiconductor Field Programmable Gate Arrays in the field of Logistics. FPGAs are an integrated circuit whose circuits can be re-written after manufacturing.

FPGAs have attracted attention in recent years as AI semiconductor solutions. MEC and GROUND will undertake research with the aim of accelerating the development of the Dynamic Allocation System®” (DyAS®), the AI logistics software that GROUND is currently developing in-house.

With electronic commerce(eCom) developing into social infrastructure that supports people’s lives due to the widespread adoption of Internet-based purchases, flea market apps and so on, the volume of transactions has increased, while the diversification of consumer purchasing experiences has also accelerated due to the concurrence of brick-and-mortar and eCom stores. As a result, the role of logistics in supporting eCom behind the scenes to ensure that products are delivered accurately and without delay has also been forced to change. This has created a growing need to optimize distribution warehouses to handle small-lot, high-frequency deliveries and immediate deliveries, and to optimize complex combinations of various factors involved with purchasing scenarios and distribution sites in ways that are tailored to consumer needs.

“We are delighted that we have the opportunity to work with Mahindra Ecole Centrale on joint research into speeding up the processing of combination optimization using FPGAs. This joint research is an endeavor of profound significance to apply FPGAs, whose practical utilization is still in its infancy, for the fields of logistics and distribution. In addition to performing GPU-based parallel processing, by also using new computer chips to perform CPU-optimized computations in parallel, we will achieve fast processing speeds even working with large volumes of combination data, and we hope to leverage this for faster logistics handling”, says Takatsugu Kobayashi, General Manager, GROUND Inc.

“At MEC, research is an integral part of our very being. We are happy to partner GROUND in the joint development of a niche technology that will be of value to the company along its line of business in logistics and distribution. This manifests our keen desire to actively interact with different companies and contribute to their growth in areas at the frontiers of global technology”, says Dr. Arya K. Bhattacharya, Dean Research, Mahindra Ecole Centrale.