Movidius Fathom Is a Deep Neural Network Accelerator in USB Format

Artificial intelligence, supercomputers, and Bitcoin seem to be three of the hottest trends in the world of technology right now. Thanks to the Movidius Fathom USB stick, any Linux computer can become an AI supercomputer all of a sudden. Quite an exciting development to take note of, as it offers a lot of attractive opportunities.

Movidius Fathom Packs Quite The Punch

For a USB stick that looks no different than any other, the Movidius Fathom is a technological marvel under the hood. The company dubs this solution as the world’s first “embedded neural network accelerator”, which brings additional functions to any computer in the world running the Linux operating system.

Plugging in this device will allow Linux users to train advanced artificially intelligent systems, or even build emotionally intelligent robo-advisors. As one would come to expect from the Movidius Fathom, the USB stick comes with a deep learning processing accelerator. Some of the other functions it can perform include language comprehension, pattern detection, and image recognition.

For those users who are not looking to use the Movidius Fathom as a neural network in USB format all of the time, the stick can be used as a regular drive as well. However, its bread and butter are the Myriad 2 VPU, combined with 512MB LPDDR3 is a portable format. Moreover, the device can output up to 150GOPS below 1W.

To install the USB device itself, the user will need a 64-bit Linux distro and 50MB of free space. As soon as the Movidius Fathom has been plugged in, the host computer can instantly access the additional features. Especially developers, researchers, and people involved in the maker industry will enjoy the capabilities this tiny device has to offer, thanks to Google’s TensorFlow being embedded.

Interested parties should check out the Movidius website, as only “qualified customers” can buy the device for the time being. The website also contains a lot more details regarding this device and where it potential lies. A Deep Neural Network acceleration module that fits in one’s pocket is quite a significant step forward for the technology sector; that much is certain.

Source: Fossbytes

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