Google Research and Synaptics Launch Next-Gen Coral Dev Board for Multimodal Edge AI Applications

Insider Brief

  • Synaptics announced a limited-edition Coral Dev Board powered by its Astra SL2610 platform and Google Research’s Coral NPU to support low-power, on-device AI development.
  • The board integrates a 1 TOPS Synaptics Torq NPU and supports edge inference for applications such as wearables, smart home devices, industrial systems and robotics.
  • Developed with partners including Grinn Global and RS, the platform is designed to help engineers prototype and deploy edge AI systems more quickly using open tools and models such as Google’s Gemma.

PRESS RELASE — Synaptics® Incorporated (Nasdaq: SYNA) today announced the new, limited-edition Coral Dev Board powered by the Astra™ SL2610 product line that integrates the 1 TOPS Synaptics Torq™ NPU featuring the industry’s first implementation of the Coral NPU from Google Research. This dev board is purpose-built to accelerate the next wave of power-efficient and personalized AI experiences across wearables, hearables, smart home appliances, automation hubs, industrial control systems, and robotics.

The Coral Dev Board is designed for ultra-low power, always-on applications using ambient sensing, and enables fast, efficient on-device inference, supporting all-day AI experiences in battery-constrained form factors. It offers a rich set of hardware interfaces, including camera and display support via CSI/DSI and USB, microphone inputs, and Wi-Fi®/Bluetooth® connectivity through an M.2 expansion slot. Targeted at AI and ML engineers, system architects, and ODMs/OEMs, the platform provides an accessible and open environment for experimentation and rapid production prototyping.

Synaptics’ MLIR-based Torq open-source toolchain supports popular machine learning frameworks and models, enabling a unified development experience from model optimization to deployment. When coupled with Gemma™, Google’s open-source model family for the Edge, the combined hardware and software stack offers a powerful, open foundation for building private and efficient Edge AI applications. The Coral NPU and Synaptics Torq toolchain are available today as part of the Synaptics Astra SL2610 product line.

Synaptics, in partnership with Grinn Global and RS, is launching a limited-edition version of the Synaptics Coral Dev Board, which will be pre-configured with an out-of-box Edge AI experience featuring the Gemma 3 270M model, enabling immediate hands-on development of on-device generative and perception-based AI workloads. Powered by Grinn’s AstraSOM-2619 system-on-module, the platform combines production-ready hardware with rapid prototyping capabilities, providing a clear and efficient path from evaluation to scalable deployment.

“The Synaptics Coral Dev Board built with the Coral NPU makes it dramatically easier for developers to bring advanced AI capabilities out of the cloud and onto real devices,” said Billy Rutledge, Director, Google Research. “By combining efficient, AI-first hardware with an open and accessible software stack, this platform lowers the barrier to building private, always-on Edge AI experiences that can run all day in power-constrained environments. With Astra SL2610, Synaptics has combined efficient, AI-first hardware with a strong developer-focused software stack, and our collaboration reflects a shared commitment to making it easier for developers to bring advanced, secure, AI capabilities to Edge applications.”

“Gemma family of open models was created to make its state-of-the-art AI research more accessible to developers and researchers,” said Olivier Lacombe, Product Lead, Google DeepMind. “With the Synaptics Coral Dev Board, developers can immediately start developing with Gemma 3 270M on optimized Edge hardware, enabling fast iteration and new classes of on-device generative and perception-based applications.”

“The Synaptics Coral Dev Board reflects our commitment to building an open, developer-first Edge AI ecosystem,” said Vikram Gupta, SVP & GM, Edge Compute & Connectivity Solutions, Synaptics. “With our Astra SL2610 product line, backed by open-source models, tools, and a ready-to-use development experience, we’re accelerating the prototyping to production design cycle. This development board is the first of many we plan to create in partnership with Google Research as we continue expanding our Edge AI ecosystem.”

“While developing the hardware for this project, we focused on keeping it compact, while integrating all the essential interfaces developers need to prototype, test, and build Edge AI solutions. Synaptics’ Astra processors make it remarkably straightforward to design and bring development boards to life,” said Robert Otreba, CEO, Grinn Global. “With the Astra™ SL2610, we were able to rapidly build a developer-ready platform that balances performance, power efficiency, and openness. Combined with the Google Research collaboration, this partnership delivers a truly compelling foundation for Edge AI innovation.”

“Edge AI developers everywhere are demanding accessible, production grade platforms they can start building on immediately,” said Richard Curtin, SVP, Product & Supplier Solutions at RS. “As a long-standing Google Research and Coral partner, we’re proud to bring the new Synaptics Coral Dev Board to a global customer base. This latest innovation puts powerful, developer ready Edge AI hardware directly into the hands of AI and ML engineers—helping them accelerate prototyping, scale solutions faster, and bring real world AI applications to market with confidence.”

Synaptics will showcase the limited edition Synaptics Coral Dev Board in Hall 4-A, booth #259 at Embedded World 2026.

Greg Bock

Greg Bock is an award-winning investigative journalist with more than 25 years of experience in print, digital, and broadcast news. His reporting has spanned crime, politics, business and technology, earning multiple Keystone Awards and a Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters honors. Through the Associated Press and Nexstar Media Group, his coverage has reached audiences across the United States.

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