Singapore's Acrab Unveils GELIX 1 AI Processor, Claims 7.5x Speed Edge Over Mac Mini M4 Pro
Source: Digitimes
Singapore chip startup Acrab unveiled its GELIX 1 AI processor, claiming 7.5x speed over Apple's Mac Mini M4 Pro on local LLM inference. The 5nm chip handles models up to 100 billion parameters and powers the new Agent Box device for private, always-on AI at home or office.
When a Singapore chip startup claims its first processor can outpace Apple's M4 Max on AI inference, it's worth paying attention. Acrab, the homegrown semiconductor firm that raised over US$350 million earlier this year, has finally shown its hand — and the numbers are striking.
The company unveiled the GELIX 1 processor on July 22, built on a 5-nanometer process with a 20-core Arm CPU, a multicore neural processing unit, and 273GB/s of unified memory bandwidth on a single die. Acrab says the chip can handle open-source models up to 100 billion parameters locally — workloads that have historically required server-class infrastructure, now small enough to sit on a desk.
In benchmarks released by Acrab, GELIX 1 achieved a prefill rate of 1,416 tokens per second running a Gemma 26B model with a 40,000-token context window, compared to 188 tokens per second on a Mac Mini M4 Pro under the same configuration. That is a claimed 7.5x speed advantage for the most memory-intensive phase of inference. Independent verification of these figures has not yet been published.
Alongside the chip, Acrab announced Agent Box — a consumer device powered by GELIX 1 positioned as a private, always-on AI system for home and office use. Unlike cloud-based AI services that charge per query or per token, Agent Box is sold as a one-time hardware purchase. CEO Ken Phua framed the strategy around a broader industry shift: "Generative AI helped people find answers. Agentic AI will help them get things done." The chip is designed to power multi-step autonomous tasks — scheduling, research, device control — without constant cloud round-trips, addressing both latency and privacy concerns that have held back enterprise AI adoption.
Why it matters for Singapore: Acrab's GELIX 1 represents a bet that Singapore can produce not just AI policy and talent, but cutting-edge silicon. The company plans to license its chip and software platform to device manufacturers for use in AI PCs, network-attached storage, vehicles, and industrial robots — putting Singapore's semiconductor ambitions on the map beyond the foundry and packaging segments where the country already has a foothold. If GELIX 1 delivers on its benchmark claims, it positions the city-state as a credible player in the race to bring large-model inference to the edge.