Alexa is set to appear in many more inconspicuous objects around the home after Amazon got its voice assistant working with 1MB of RAM and a very low power chip.
As TechCrunch reports, using the Alexa Voice Service before today required a device have at least an ARM Cortex A-class processor and 100MB of RAM. However, thanks to cloud computing in the form of Amazon Web Services (AWS), the requirements have been drastically reduced to am ARM Cortex-M processor and 1MB of RAM.
By reducing the hardware requirements so much, it means Alexa can be integrated into just about any standard household object with a power source. For example, Alexa in a light switch, power outlet, or lightbulb could all become quite common applications and for a minimal additional cost of components. Getting Alexa on to as many Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices is clearly Amazon's goal here.
Dirk Didascalou, vice president of AWS IoT, explains how Alexa can work in just 1MB of RAM, "We now offload the vast majority of all of this to the cloud ... So the device can be ultra dumb. The only thing that the device still needs to do is wake word detection. That still needs to be covered on the device."
While this does open up Alexa to a lot more hardware integrations, it's not going to replace smart speakers. You may be able to tell your lightbulb to illuminate, but it isn't going to tell you about today's weather forecast, at least, not yet...