ANKER’s audio-focused sub-brand soundcore has announced it will launch a new flagship wireless earbuds on 22 May 2026. Notably, the company claims it will feature “world’s first neural-net compute-in-memory AI audio chip” in the form of ANKER Thus.
soundcore’s Upcoming Earbuds
The concept of compute-in-memory (CIM) is not new in itself, which has been used on things like gaming consoles and wearables to process data in real-time by using a portion of functions found in a typical processor (i.e. multiplication). Such design is made to work around a fundamental limit in CPU design called Von Neumann bottleneck, which is an inherent limitation on the maximum throughput limited by the speed at which data moves between CPU and memory, and that affects power efficiency in the contexts of wearables or any portable hardware in general.
While not explicitly stated, the new architecture points to matrix functions (like you’d find in NPUs) directly integrated into the CIM architecture, which could explain the company claiming a 150x increase in peak AI compute power compared to its previous generation design. For the specific compute that is required on earbuds – such as ANC and noise cancellation in voice calls – more powerful matrix processing is exactly what is needed to handle more demanding conditions when it comes to isolating outside noises.
On top of that, the same hardware is reportedly capable of processing voice commands on-the-fly, without requiring processing from the host device or cloud services; it’s also capable of processing 8 microphones onboard, so that should be a hint on how powerful the upcoming earbuds’ ANC and noise cancellation is going to be. As a matter of fact, soundcore is attempting a Guinness World Record on “Highest speech quality score (G-MOS) for TWS earbuds (objective test)”, which evaluates the voice call audio quality on the scale of 1-5 points (5 being maximum).
As far as the Malaysian market is concerned, ANKER will reveal full details of the new flagship earbuds come this Friday, which will be available through Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop, as well as the company’s newly-debuted retail store at IOI City Mall, Putrajaya.
Pokdepinion: Color me intrigued.
