STMicroelectronics and NUS launch Corporate Lab to power the future of Edge AI in Singapore

STMicroelectronics N.V., a worldwide semiconductor leader serving consumers in the spectrum of electronics applications, and the National University of Singapore (NUS) have launched the ST–NUS HELIX Corporate Lab, a four-year strategic research initiative focused on advancing the next generation of edge AI technologies. HELIX, which stands for Hardware for Embodied Low-power Intelligent Acceleration, allows novel generative and embodied AI-driven use cases at the edge via system-to-silicon novelty.

The Corporate Lab is supported under the Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2025 plan and is hosted at the College of Design and Engineering, with collaboration from the School of Computing at NUS. The Corporate Lab brings together a multidisciplinary research ecosystem spanning AI-based algorithms, accelerator architectures, low-power memory technology, circuit design, silicon technologies, and application development. The programme will integrate NUS’ pioneering research with ST’s expertise in semiconductor solutions, system development, and industry operations.

NUS President Professor Tan Eng Chye said: “The ST–NUS HELIX Corporate Lab is a testament to the value of industry–academia partnerships in translating research into innovation. By combining NUS’ research strengths with STMicroelectronics’ industrial capabilities, we are building not only advanced, cutting-edge edge AI hardware, but also the talent and ecosystem that will help define the future of Singapore’s semiconductor and AI industries.”

Laurent Malier, Executive Vice President, Global Technology R&D at STMicroelectronics, said: “ST’s strength as an integrated device manufacturer lies in our ability to bring together advanced silicon technologies, embedded memory, circuit design, heterogeneous integration and chiplets. Through HELIX, we are creating an industrially relevant foundation to explore differentiated AI computing technologies and accelerate the translation of promising research into scalable semiconductor solutions.”

The Corporate Lab was professionally launched by Ms Low Yen Ling, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, and Ministry of Trade and Industry, as the Guest-of-Honour.

Building the future of edge AI

Edge AI-driven processes information directly within or close to a tool rather than relying exclusively on remote cloud infrastructure. This allows faster response times, stronger data privacy, enhanced energy efficiency, and increasing resilience in environments with limited or intermittent connectivity. These capabilities are increasingly significant for AI-based systems that must perceive, reason, and act in real time, in the real world often described as Physical AI.

HELIX focuses on a significant frontier in this space: embodied AI, where intelligence is built significantly into a physical form like a robot, humanoid, or drone, integrating multi-modal sensing, on-device computing, and real-time actuation. Delivering that intelligence effectively, on compact and power-driven hardware, is the challenge HELIX is built to address. Allowing these abilities at the edge needs innovation in the algorithms, software, technology architecture, and hardware.

HELIX builds on ST’s long-standing journey in AI and will help explore new system-level services that integrate effective computing, well-developed memory architecture, and application-based design to tackle the requirements of future intelligent tools. Complementing ST’s capabilities, NUS brings world-class expertise in integrated circuits, computer architecture, AI models, and technology design. Under the collaboration, scientists from NUS and STMicroelectronics potentially work on research work packages, talent advancement, IP creation, and demonstration activities.

The research at HELIX will span the full technology stack, from AI-based models and technology architecture to heterogeneous accelerators, on-chip memory hierarchies, circuit design, chip incorporation, and silicon implementation. It focuses on memory-driven architecture, innovative in-memory computing, and scalable compute-and-memory technology, supported by ST’s P18 18nm Fully Depleted Silicon On Insulator (FD-SOI) technology and embedded Phase Change Memory (PCM). P18 FD-SOI allows ultra-low-power operation and adaptive body-biasing, while entrenched PCM offers dense, non-volatile storage on the same die alongside the on-chip SRAM hierarchy. Together, these abilities lessen the off-chip information movement, which dominates the energy consumption of memory-bound AI workloads.

ST will make a substantial technology and engineering contribution to HELIX by offering NUS with an intended design chassis executed in its proprietary P18 18nm FD-SOI technology. The platform brings together ST’s silicon, architecture, integration, and engineering abilities to give scientists an industrial-grade foundation for advancing, incorporating, and validating novel AI-based accelerator concepts. By avoiding the requirement to build the underlying infrastructure from the ground up, the design chassis allows significant focus on differentiated innovation, speeds up system-level validation, and makes a more direct path from technology pathfinding to mechanization.

By integrating recent developments in AI-based algorithms, speed-up architectures, memory technology, circuits, and semiconductor solutions, HELIX aims to tackle the energy-driven, memory-bandwidth, latency, scalability, and integration challenges related to deploying progressively capable AI-driven technology at the edge.

According to Towards Healthcare, the medical microelectronics market is projected to grow significantly, with estimates indicating the market size will increase from USD 45.93 billion in 2026 to approximately USD 82.32 billion by 2035, expanding at a CAGR of 6.84% from 2026 to 2035. Microelectronic tools supports effectively to overcome cost-effectiveness and time minimization for human health management. Microelectronics had a profound impact on healthcare tools, lowering the size and power requirements of sensors, actuators, cameras and microprocessors used in healthcare tools and day-to-day patient care. Microelectronic tools can help effectively to stunned cost-efficiency and time reduction for human health management. Bioelectronic tools and the importance of microelectronic devices and their significance in human health for disease diagnosis and management.

About STMicroelectronics

At ST, we are 49,000 creators and creators of semiconductor technologies, mastering the semiconductor supply chain with advanced manufacturing services. An integrated tools manufacturer, work with more than 200,000 consumer and thousands of collaborators to design and build products, services, and ecosystems that tackles their challenges and opportunities, and the requirement to helps a more sustainable world. This company's technologies allow smarter mobility, more effective power and energy management, and the wide-scale deployment of cloud-driven autonomous things. Organizations are on track to be carbon neutral in all direct and indirect emissions, product transportation, business travel, and employee commuting emissions, and to attain our 100% renewable electricity sourcing aim by the end of 2027.

A recent report by Towards Healthcare highlights that the medical microelectronics market is growing, as medical microelectronics creates novel opportunities in detecting conditions earlier, diagnosing diseases, and guiding management and rehabilitation. Medical microelectronics enables the seamless integration of sensors, actuators, cameras and microprocessors in healthcare tools, thus driving the implementation of data-based healthcare solutions. Small in size, these tools are applied for specialised measurements and sensing applications and fitted even inside the human body.