Intel neural compute stick 2 announced

Intel has released the next version of its Intel Neural Compute Stick 2, a USB device that the company says can greatly speed up artificial intelligence processing, and deep inference of learning on consumer PCs.

Intel Neural Compute Stick 2

Intel Neural Compute Stick 2 is intended for use cases, where neural networks must be implemented without a connection to cloud-based computing resources. It uses the Intel Movidius Myriad X VPU visual processing unit, and is priced at $ 99. The Neural Compute Stick 2 is slightly larger than a USB flash drive, and connects to a standard USB 3.0 port. The device does not have a fan and does not require additional power. It can be used with pre-trained neural networks for smart cameras, IoT devices, robotics, drones, and VR hardware. Intel has previously shown demos of the first-generation Neural Compute Stick, which recognizes and classifies people and objects, in a real-time video stream, which could be used in security applications or for traffic management, when low latency is important.

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Intel claims up to 8x better performance in certain situations with the Neural Compute Stick 2 compared to its predecessor. The Myriad X VPU has a dedicated neural computing engine, 16 programmable compute cores, and logic to process dual 720p video streams. Currently, the device works with Linux on standard PCs or Raspberry Pi computers, but Intel has said that support for Windows ML is coming soon. Tensorflow and Caffe frameworks are supported, and Intel distributes its own version of the OpenVino toolkit, to speed up the performance of computer vision.

The company expects AI capabilities to become an important part of client PC workloads in the future. According to the company's study, almost 70 percent of companies could deploy AI by 2020.

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