I remember hearing about coral when it first came out, and it is exactly what I want to see more of. Low-cost, efficient AI accelerators for home use. I haven't personally used it but I have used Nvidia's Jetson Nano, which is similar but more power hungry. Coral does has some issues though, namely that you are locked into tensorflow lite (a similar issue with the Jetson series, but less bad since you can translate models into tensorRT), and the edge TPU hasn't had an update since 2018 as far as I can tell, and surely there have been breakthroughs to make them more efficient, able handle larger and newer models, or at least cheaper since then. I could be conspiratorial and suggest that any more powerful and they will cut into google cloud service money, but it's moot.
In short, I like it and I want to see more of it. In a capitalist view, I want more competition in this space.
Edit: I know that multiple edge TPUs can be used together, but larger solutions for municipal or business use would be nice as well.
I didn't realize the hardware locks you to a software suite, that's generally a dealbreaker unless you already use that software for everything. The conspiratorial comment seems quite likely to me. It really seemed like they were putting a lot of weight behind the project and then just dropped it.
Yeah, it leaves a lot to be desired, especially because Torch is much better than TensorFlow to work with (imo). But still, it's a step in the right direction. I would love to see more like it (but better) in the future. A peek at mouser shows that there are a few options in the $100-$200 range, but at that price I'll save the headache of trying to figure out what frameworks they support and get a Jetson. Lots to be desired in this sector.
I remember hearing about coral when it first came out, and it is exactly what I want to see more of. Low-cost, efficient AI accelerators for home use. I haven't personally used it but I have used Nvidia's Jetson Nano, which is similar but more power hungry. Coral does has some issues though, namely that you are locked into tensorflow lite (a similar issue with the Jetson series, but less bad since you can translate models into tensorRT), and the edge TPU hasn't had an update since 2018 as far as I can tell, and surely there have been breakthroughs to make them more efficient, able handle larger and newer models, or at least cheaper since then. I could be conspiratorial and suggest that any more powerful and they will cut into google cloud service money, but it's moot.
In short, I like it and I want to see more of it. In a capitalist view, I want more competition in this space.
Edit: I know that multiple edge TPUs can be used together, but larger solutions for municipal or business use would be nice as well.
I didn't realize the hardware locks you to a software suite, that's generally a dealbreaker unless you already use that software for everything. The conspiratorial comment seems quite likely to me. It really seemed like they were putting a lot of weight behind the project and then just dropped it.
Yeah, it leaves a lot to be desired, especially because Torch is much better than TensorFlow to work with (imo). But still, it's a step in the right direction. I would love to see more like it (but better) in the future. A peek at mouser shows that there are a few options in the $100-$200 range, but at that price I'll save the headache of trying to figure out what frameworks they support and get a Jetson. Lots to be desired in this sector.