Performance Analysis of Edge and In-Sensor AI Processors: A Comparative Review

Abstract: This review examines the rapidly evolving landscape of ultra-low-power edge processors, covering heterogeneous Systems-on-Chips (SoCs), neural accelerators, near-sensor and in-sensor architectures, and emerging dataflow and memory-centric designs. We categorize commercially available and research-grade platforms according to their compute paradigms, power envelopes, and memory hierarchies, and analyze their suitability for always-on and latency-critical AI workloads. To complement the architectural overview with empirical evidence, we benchmark a 336 million Multiply-Accumulate (MAC) segmentation model (PicoSAM2) on three representative processors: GAP9, leveraging a multi-core RISC-V architecture augmented with hardware accelerators; the STM32N6, which pairs an advanced ARM Cortex-M55 core with a dedicated neural architecture accelerator; and the Sony IMX500, representing in-sensor stacked-Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) compute. Collectively, these platforms span MCU-class, embedded neural accelerator, and in-sensor paradigms. The evaluation reports latency, inference efficiency, energy efficiency, and energy-delay product. The results show a clear divergence in hardware behavior, with the IMX500 achieving the highest utilization (86.2 MAC/cycle) and the lowest energy-delay product, highlighting the growing significance and technological maturity of in-sensor processing. GAP9 offers the best energy efficiency within microcontroller-class power budgets, and the STM32N6 provides the lowest raw latency at a significantly higher energy cost. Together, the review and benchmarks provide a unified view of the current design directions and practical trade-offs that are shaping the next generation of ultra-low-power and in-sensor AI processors.