Neural network hardware accelerator is connected via USB

The US company Movidius is known as the developer of the Myriad 2 VPU neural network hardware accelerator and chipset provider for the GoogleNet artificial intelligence system.

After optimization and preparation of the binary in the Fathom Deep Learning Software Framework framework, the neural network effectively operates on the Myriad 2 accelerator with power consumption less than 1 W. Such chips are ideal for robots, multicopters, smartphones, surveillance cameras, augmented reality helmets - any gadgets where object recognition, speech recognition, object tracking, navigation, etc. are useful.
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Simultaneously with the Fathom framework, the company Movidius today at the Embedded Vision Summit in California for the first time showed the public the Fathom Neural Compute Stick flash accelerator, the world's first device of its kind. Here, in general, everything is immediately ready for use. The flash drive with the built-in accelerator Myriad 2 is simply inserted into any device with a USB port.

Thus, developers can now natively test neural networks right away on target devices for which they are designed.



When connected to a computer, the Fathom Neural Compute Stick USB flash drive serves as a profiling and evaluation tool, speeding up the prototyping and training of the neural network. Fathom supports core depth learning frameworks, including Caffe and TensorFlow.

“As a participant in the depth learning ecosystem, I had long hoped for the emergence of something like Fathom,” said Dr. Yan Lekun (Yann LeCun), founder and director of the data center at New York University, a renowned expert in machine learning, computer vision , mobile robotics and computational neuroscience, one of the creators of the image compression technology DjVu and the programming language Lush. - Fathom Neural Compute Stick is a compact, low-power convolutional network accelerator for embedded applications that is unique in itself. As a developer and creator of various robots and unmanned vehicles, I have long dreamed of getting something in my hands. With Fathom, every robot, big or small, immediately gets the best computer vision. ”



Movidius has already received orders for more than 1 million Myriad 2 accelerators. The company expects that neural network accelerators will soon be introduced into smartphones and other gadgets. This will lead to the proliferation of many new unique applications, which are now so lacking. For example, we can finally instantly recognize a girl on the subway by running a neural network with a local copy of Vkontakte profiles on our own smartphone.

One of 1000 copies of the Fathom Neural Compute Stick can be ordered for free for testing. Home sales are expected in the IV quarter. 2016 for less than $ 100.