Raspberry Pi-powered Web of Issues (IoT) and edge computing specialist Sixfab has launched an “industrial-grade” system for machine studying and synthetic intelligence (ML and AI) on the edge — the ALPON X5 AI, pushed by a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 paired with a DEEPX DX-M1 neural community coprocessor.
“We created ALPON X5 AI as a result of we noticed a real want for a platform that mixes industrial efficiency with the simplicity and openness builders love about Raspberry Pi,” says Sixfab co-founder and chief govt officer Sait Borlak of the corporate’s design. “Our imaginative and prescient is simple but bold: to empower each innovator to construct clever, safe, and personal AI purposes on the edge, with out boundaries.”
The ALPON X5 AI is constructed across the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5, the computer-on-module variant of the favored Raspberry Pi 5 single-board pc — taking the identical quad-core Broadcom BCM2712 system-on-chip however leaving peripheral connectivity as much as the designer of the service board into which it is put in. To higher go well with the goal workload of edge AI, Sixfab has paired this with a DEEPX DX-M1 accelerator, a neural coprocessor that delivers a claimed 25 tera-operations per second (TOPS) of compute at minimal precision.
The customized service board, which features a international 4G LTE mobile modem with embedded SIM (eSIM) along with the dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios accessible on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 itself, is put in in an “industrial-grade” aluminum enclosure that, the corporate says, can maintain each the Broadcom BCM2712 and the DEEPX DX-M1 working cool with out the necessity for a fan.
Sixfab makes some daring claims for its edge-AI system, together with promising to match NVIDIA’s Jetson AGX Orin for YOLOv5s efficiency. (📷: Sixfab)
Sixfab’s greatest promoting level for the ALPON X5 AI, although, is not within the {hardware} however the software program — promising that the gadget will arrive to backers “prepared to make use of out of the field.” The corporate says that customers can “go from unboxing to dwell AI inference inside minutes.”
Its claims for the capabilities of the DEEPX DX-M1, although, needs to be taken with a pinch of salt: the corporate claims the 25 TOPS accelerator delivers “equal efficiency” to a graphics processor delivering 200 TOPS, matching an NVIDIA Jetson Orin AGX module in YOLOv5s efficiency whereas vastly outstripping it in vitality effectivity — the accelerator drawing simply 3.5W, an order of magnitude lower than NVIDIA’s extra highly effective system.
Sixfab is at the moment crowdfunding manufacturing of the ALPON X5 AI on Kickstarter, with bodily rewards beginning at $549 for “tremendous early hen” backers; all units are anticipated to ship in December this yr, the corporate says.
