Google Coral SBC was the first development board with Google Edge TPU. The AI accelerator was combined with an NXP i.MX 8M quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 processor and 1GB RAM to provide an all-in-all AI edge computing platform. It launched for $175, and now still retails for $160 which may not be affordable to students and hobbyists. Google announced a new model called Coral Dev Board Mini last January, and the good news is that the board is now available for pre-order for just under $100 on Seeed Studio with shipping scheduled to start by the end of the month. Coral Dev Board Mini specifications haven’t changed much since the original announcement, but we know a few more details: SoC – MediaTek MT8167S quad-core Arm Cortex-A35 processor @ 1.3 GHz with Imagination PowerVR GE8300 GPU AI/ML accelerator – Google Edge TPU coprocessor with up to 4 TOPS as part of Coral […]
FPGA powered Corazon-AI gateway supports up to 8 IP cameras for video analytics
Earlier this year, we covered some video analytics solutions based on AAEON UP Xtreme Edge embedded computer combining an Intel Whiskey Lake processor with Intel Movidius Myriad X AI accelerator modules, as well as video management & analytics software solutions from Milestones & SAIMOS, or aotu.ai BrainFrame. iWave Systems has now introduced a similar solution with Corazon-AI gateway capable of handling up to 8 IP cameras in real-time, but instead of relying on AI accelerators, the company leverages Xilinx Zynq Ultrascale+ Arm Cortex-A53/R5 FPGA MPSoC for AI inference. Corazon-AI gateway specifications: SoC – Xilinz Zynq Ultrascale+ ZU2, ZU3, ZU4 or ZU5 MPSoC Processing System (PS) Quad/Dual Arm Cortex-A53 @ 1.5GHz, dual Cortex-R5 @ 600MHz Arm Mali-400MP2 GPU @ 677MHz H.264/H.265 Video Encoder/Decoder Programming Logic (PL) Up to 256K Logic cells PL GTH Transceivers x 4 @ 12.5 Gbps System Memory 64bit, 2GB DDR4 with ECC for PS (upgradable) 32bit, 1GB […]
VIA VAB-950 SBC Features MediaTek i500 SoC for AIoT Applications
While MediaTek is better known for their mobile SoCs and they also offers processors made for AIoT (AI + IoT) applications such as MediaTek i700, i500 or i300 SoCs. We only covered a few development / evaluation boards so far, with Pumpkin i500 SBC or Innocom SB30 EVK, but we’ve now got another one with VIA VAB-950 single board computer equipped with MediaTek i500 AIoT octa-core processor, up to 4GB LPDDR4, 16GB flash storage, HDMI, dual Fast Ethernet, dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, and support for 4G LTE cellular connectivity. VAB-950 SBC specifications: SOM-9X50 system-on-module SoC – MediaTek i500 octa-core processor with 4x Cortex-A73 @ 2.0GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 @ 2.0GHz Arm Mali-G72 GPU up to 800 MHz with support for OpenGL ES 3.0, OpenCL ES 1.1, and Vulkan 1.0 VPU for 1080p30 H.264/H.265 decoding 2x Cadence Tensilica Vision P6 DSPs System Memory – 2GB or 4GB LPDDR4 SDRAM Storage – […]
Imagination IMG B-Series GPU family scales from IoT to the datacenter
Last year, Imagination Technologies unveiled IMG A-Series GPU family scaling from low-power IoT to mobile and high-performance server applications with up to 2.5 times the performance of the earlier PowerVR 9-series GPUs, as well as eight times faster AI processing and 60% less power under similar conditions. While I’m not aware of any SoCs announced with the new IMG A-Series GPU yet, the company has already announced the next-gen IMG B-Series GPU family with up to 4 times the multi-core performance thanks to decentralized multi-core technology, 30% lower power consumption, and 2.5 times the fill rate. The company offers four types of IM B-series GPU, each optimized for specific applications IMG BXE for high-resolution displays – From 1 up to 16 pixels per clock (PPC) BXE scales from 720p to 8K for UI rendering and entry-level gaming. IMG BXM designed for mid-range mobile gaming and complex UI solutions for DTV […]
$16 Banana Pi BPI-EAI80 Cortex-M4F Board Embeds AI Accelerator, WiFi Module
Last April, we wrote about Edgeless EAI-Series dual Arm Cortex-M4 MCU equipped with a 300 GOPS CNN-NPU for AI at the very edge as we had discovered the chip in an upcoming Banana Pi board. It turns out Banana Pi BPI-EAI80 development board powered by Edgeless EAI80 AI microcontroller has just launched for $16 on Aliexpress, or you could get a complete kit with a touchscreen display, a camera, and a USB power supply for $80. Banana Pi BPI-EAI80 development board specifications: System-in-Package – Edgeless EIA80 dual-core Cortex-M4F microcontroller @ 200MHz with 300GOPS AI accelerator (CNN-NPU), 384KB of SRAM including 256KB for CNN-NPU, and 8MB SDRAM Storage – SPI flash Display I/F – LCD connector up to 1024×768 Camera I/F – 1x DVP camera interface Audio – 2x onboard microphones Connectivity – 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n WiFI 4 using ESP8266 module USB – 1x USB 2.0 Type-C port Expansion 40-pin GPIO header […]
MAX78000 RISC-V & Cortex-M4F MCU enables IoT artificial Intelligence in battery-powered devices
Now even endpoints like sensors are capable of running basic artificial intelligence workloads thanks to microcontroller-class chips with built-in AI accelerators or instructions such as Kneron KL720 Arm Cortex-M4 AI SoC, GAP8 RISC-V IoT processor, or Cortex-M55 MCU core coupled with Ethos U55 MicroNPU. Maxim Integrated has now launched its own AI capable microcontroller with MAX78000 combining a Cortex-M4F core, a 32-bit RISC-V core, and a CNN accelerator enabling AI inferences at less than 1/100th the energy or 100 times the speed of software solutions making especially suited for battery-powered AI applications. MAX78000 specifications: Ultra-Low-Power microcontrollers Arm Cortex-M4F core with FPU Up to 100MHz with 512KB Flash and 128KB SRAM 32-Bit RISC-V ultra-low-power co-processor up to 60MHz Neural Network Accelerator optimized for Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) 442k 8bit Weight Capacity with 1,2,4,8-bit Weights Input Image Size up to 1024 x 1024 pixels Network Depth up to 64 Layers Layer […]
Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ ZU19EG MPSoC Devkit Offers HDMI 2.0, 10GbE, High-Speed Transceivers
iWave Systems iW-RainboW-G35D is a development kit powered by Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ ZU19EG Arm Cortex-A53 and FPGA MPSoC coupled with 4GB DDR4 RAM with ECC for the processing system (PS) & 4GB dual-channel DDR4 RAM for the programmable logic (PL). The board is equipped with HDMI 2.0 output/input ports supporting 4Kp60 UHD resolutions, a 10GbE SFP+ cage, FMC+, FMC, FireFly, and QSFP connectors for high-speed transceivers, and more. iW-RainboW-G35D specifications: iW-RainboW-G35M SoM Xilinx Zynq Ultrascale+ ZCU19EG MPSOC (-1 speed) with four Cortex-A53 cores @ 1200 MHz, dual-core Arm Cortex-R5 MPCore up to 600MHz, FPGA fabric with 1,143K logic cells, and Arm Mali-400 MP2 GPU (lower-end ZCU17EG and ZCU11EG MPSoC are also available) System Memory 4GB DDR4 RAM for PS 4GB Dual DDR4 RAM for PL Storage – 8GB eMMC Flash (for boot code) Transceivers PS-GTR Transceivers x 4 @ 6Gbps PL-GTH Transceivers x 32 @ 16.3Gbps PL-GTY Transceivers x 16 […]
Learn more about Hailo-8 AI accelerator and understanding AI benchmarks
Last week we wrote about Hailo-8 M.2 card delivering up to 26 TOPS of AI performance, and comparing well against Google Edge TPU and Intel Movidius Myriad X both in terms of footprint, performance, and efficiency. I’ve since then had a conference call with Liran Bar, VP of Business Development for Hailo, where we had time to discuss more about Hailo’s AI solutions, and how to interpret & understand AI benchmarks that may be misleading in many instances. Hailo-8 Architecture In the first post, we noted the chip managed to get the extra performance and efficiency thanks to a “proprietary novel structure-driven Data Flow architecture instead of the usual Von Neumann architecture”. But that’s a bit abstract, so Liran told me one of the key reasons for the performance improvement is that RAM is self-contained without the need for external DRAM like other solutions. This decreases latency a lot and […]