Intel has unveiled new Neural Compute Stick 2 that looks like a standard USB thumb drive. It is described as a new AI brain that sticks into the side of your laptops.
This Intel Neural Compute Stick 2 is originally a self-contained neural network on a thumbdrive. It makes developing those sorts of devices faster and easier by offloading much of the processing power required to train them to its onboard Movidius Myriad X vision processing unit (VPU).
In addition, it enables deep neural network testing, tuning, and prototyping, so developers can go from prototyping into production leveraging a range of Intel vision accelerator form factors in real-world applications.
Combined with the Intel Distribution of the OpenVINO toolkit supporting more networks, the Intel NCS 2 offers developers greater prototyping flexibility. Additionally, thanks to the Intel® AI: In Production ecosystem, developers can now port their Intel NCS 2 prototypes to other form factors and productize their designs.
Working of Intel Neural Compute Stick 2:
With a laptop and the Intel NCS 2, developers can have their AI and computer vision applications up and running in minutes. The Intel NCS 2 runs on a standard USB 3.0 port and requires no additional hardware, enabling users to seamlessly convert and then deploy PC-trained models to a wide range of devices natively and without internet or cloud connectivity.
Naveen Rao, Intel corporate vice president, and general manager of the AI Products Group said, “The first-generation Intel Neural Compute Stick sparked an entire community of AI developers into action with a form factor and price that didn’t exist before. We’re excited to see what the community creates next with the strong enhancement to compute power enabled with the new Intel Neural Compute Stick 2.”
The Intel NCS 2 is available at just $99.