In 2017 I was approached by Intel to join their Innovator Programme. After a couple interviews I was inducted as an Intel Innovator in the AI space. The idea of the initiative is to support technologists around the world involved in the community by providing cutting edge hardware, speakership opportunities, and a platform to promote their work and engage with more people. Intel sent me a Movidius Neural Compute Stick. It's a USB stick a little larger than a thumb drive that is specifically designed to train and primarily run neural network graphs, which is particularly useful in running networks for deep learning where learning happened from media such as images and video.

Getting Started with Raspberry Pi even if you are a beginner, Deep Learning Basics, Object Detection Models - Pros and Cons of each CNN, Setup and Install Movidius Neural Compute Stick (NCS) SDK, Currently, the OpenVINO is available for Raspbian, so the NCS2 is already compatible with the Raspberry Pi, but this course is mainly for the Movidius (NCS version 1).

Warning note: While there won't be any NSFW photos in this post, there will be some photos of ladies in light clothing (e.g. Intel released Movidius Neural Compute Stick allowing low power image recognition at the edge earlier this year, and we've seen it work just fine with Raspberry Pi 3 board delivering three times the performance against an inference solution leveraging VideoCore IV GPU. Christian Haschek owns a photo hosting site (PictShare) which happens to run open source code with the same name, and allows user to upload images anonymously. However, he soon found out that at least one user uploaded some child pornography. He contacted the authorities, but then wondered whether there may be others?

The Movidius Neural Compute Stick enables rapid prototyping, validation and deployment of Deep Neural Network (DNN) inference applications at the edge. Its low-power VPU architecture enables an entirely new segment of AI applications that aren't reliant on a connection to the cloud. The NCS combined with Movidius Neural Compute SDK allows deep learning developers to profile, tune, and deploy Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) on low-power applications that require real-time inferencing.

Today, Intel launched the Movidius Neural Compute Stick, the world's first USB-based deep learning inference kit and self-contained artificial intelligence (AI) accelerator that delivers dedicated deep neural network processing capabilities to a wide range of host devices at the edge. Designed for product developers, researchers and makers, the Movidius Neural Compute Stick aims to reduce barriers to developing, tuning and deploying AI applications by delivering dedicated high-performance deep-neural network processing in a small form factor. As more developers adopt advanced machine learning approaches to build innovative applications and solutions, Intel is committed to providing the most comprehensive set of development tools and resources to ensure developers are retooling for an AI-centric digital economy. Whether it is training artificial neural networks on the Intel Nervana cloud, optimizing for emerging workloads such as artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, and automated driving with Intel Xeon Scalable processors, or taking AI to the edge with Movidius vision processing unit (VPU) technology, Intel offers a comprehensive AI portfolio of tools, training and deployment options for the next generation of AI-powered products and services. "The Myriad 2 VPU housed inside the Movidius Neural Compute Stick provides powerful, yet efficient performance – more than 100 gigaflops of performance within a 1W power envelope – to run real-time deep neural networks directly from the device," said Remi El-Ouazzane, vice president and general manager of Movidius, an Intel company.

With a USB hub, you can plug several Intel Movidius Neural Compute Sticks into your laptop. Want to give your PC an IQ boost? Intel's $80 Movidius Neural Compute Stick lets you plug some computing brains into your laptop's USB port. The device, geared for tinkerers and programmers, can crank out 100 billion mathematical calculations per second while consuming a paltry 1 watt of power. That's the kind of thing that can be handy if you're trying to work out computer vision in your drone or help your cleaning robot tell the difference between a cat and a coffee table.

Last year, Movidius announced its Fathom Neural Compute Stick -- a USB thumb drive that makes its image-based deep learning capabilities super accessible. But then in September of last year, Intel bought Movidius, delaying the expected winter rollout of Fathom. However, Intel has announced that the deep neural network processing stick is now available and going by its new name, the Movidius Neural Compute Stick. "Designed for product developers, researchers and makers, the Movidius Neural Compute Stick aims to reduce barriers to developing, tuning and deploying AI applications by delivering dedicated high-performance deep-neural network processing in a small form factor," said Intel in a statement. The Compute Stick contains a Myriad 2 Vision Processing Unit that uses only around one watt of power.