What happens when AI learns from the fire hose—and tests itself on silicon

About this episode

What if your model pipeline started with a simple goal—your dataset, your target chip, and your latency or energy budget—and ended with measured results on real hardware? We sit down with Model Cat CEO Evan Petritis to explore how AI can build on-device AI through a closed loop that’s grounded in silicon, not estimates or hopeful benchmarks. From a live demo to a tour of their “chip farm,” we dig into how the platform searches architectures, tunes hyperparameters, and validates performance using vendor kernels and compilers across MCUs, MPUs, and specialized accelerators.

We share the story behind the rebrand from Eta Compute to Model Cat and why the shift matters: AI research moves too fast for traditional, component-by-component toolchains. Evan breaks down five pillars for trustworthy, autonomous model creation—closed-loop goals, reality grounding, system-level intent, modular learning from new research, and a single-step, transparent experience. You’ll hear how teams can upload datasets, get automated analytics on splits and distribution shifts, set constraints like sub–5 ms inference or energy per inference, and see success predictions before training even starts.

The demo highlights the silicon library and how each device is profiled in depth—supported ops, kernel speeds, memory footprints—so accuracy, latency, and energy are measured on the actual target. Results come as clear Pareto trade-offs with downloadable artifacts that reproduce on-device. We also field audience questions on exporting to Keras and TFLite, supporting time-series and audio keyword spotting, integrating labeling partners, onboarding new MCUs and accelerators, and the roadmap toward neuromorphic targets and cost estimation.

If you care about edge AI, embedded ML, and shipping models that meet real-world constraints, this conversation shows a practical path forward: use AI to navigate the fire hose of research, then prove it on silicon. Enjoy the episode—and if it sparks ideas, subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a teammate who lives in notebooks but dreams in devices.

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