Hello all,
I've recently acquired this board:
Don't let the name fool you: AI is not the only thing this board is good for. In fact, it really doesn't have any specialized AI hardware at all. It's really a signal-processing platform.
It has a dual-core Cortex-A15, two C66x DSPs, 4x PRUs (32-bit microcontroller cores for real-time control), 2x dual-core Cortex-M4s, and several graphics acceleration units.
That's a whole lotta horsepower for $130. Combine this with any of the inexpensive USB-interfaced RF hardware and you've got a lot of possibilities for the determined amateur.
I plan to make this the core of my SatNOGS setup, with all control and processing done on this board, relaying directly to the SatNOGS DB.
--- Zach N0ZGO
The embedded Vision Accelerators aren't really graphics accelerators. They do some important things for DSP that we could potentially leverage, but I haven't been able to tell in short look if they are actually documented so that you can program them, or just are hardware accelerators for a proprietary thing they call Vision pack. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6865062
On Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 11:10 AM Zach Metzinger zmetzing@pobox.com wrote:
Hello all,
I've recently acquired this board:
Don't let the name fool you: AI is not the only thing this board is good for. In fact, it really doesn't have any specialized AI hardware at all. It's really a signal-processing platform.
It has a dual-core Cortex-A15, two C66x DSPs, 4x PRUs (32-bit microcontroller cores for real-time control), 2x dual-core Cortex-M4s, and several graphics acceleration units.
That's a whole lotta horsepower for $130. Combine this with any of the inexpensive USB-interfaced RF hardware and you've got a lot of possibilities for the determined amateur.
I plan to make this the core of my SatNOGS setup, with all control and processing done on this board, relaying directly to the SatNOGS DB.
--- Zach N0ZGO
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On 01/22/21 14:14, Bruce Perens wrote:
The embedded Vision Accelerators aren't really graphics accelerators. They do some important things for DSP that we could potentially leverage, but I haven't been able to tell in short look if they are actually documented so that you can program them, or just are hardware accelerators for a proprietary thing they call Vision pack. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6865062
The EVE is optimized to deal with pixel data, which could be input or output. From the paper you cited:
"ARP32, a 32-bit RISC core, is the master controller and programmable frontend of EVE providing the user a full ANSI-C level programming environment complete with state- of-art solution for debug and tools support for easy software development. "
"VCOP (shown in Figure 2), the Vector/Vision CO- Processor, is an 8-way SIMD engine with two parallel and identical functional units (FUs) per SIMD lane. "
You're right in that it doesn't draw circles, do fills, etc. as primitive operations.
When I speak of AI, I mean hardware Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), like this:
--- Zach N0ZGO
Zach,
I worked on a projector controller interface once that was based on the beagle bone black (cerca 2016). Nothing too fancy, mostly an ETL job between ethernet / serial devices, with a web UI for control... But yeah, those are some useful boards. For little projects now, I use the teensy-lc.
Joseph Armbruster KJ4JIO
On Fri, Jan 22, 2021 at 3:52 PM Zach Metzinger zmetzing@pobox.com wrote:
On 01/22/21 14:14, Bruce Perens wrote:
The embedded Vision Accelerators aren't really graphics accelerators. They do some important things for DSP that we could potentially leverage, but I haven't been able to tell in short look if they are actually documented so that you can program them, or just are hardware accelerators for a proprietary thing they call Vision pack. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6865062
The EVE is optimized to deal with pixel data, which could be input or output. From the paper you cited:
"ARP32, a 32-bit RISC core, is the master controller and programmable frontend of EVE providing the user a full ANSI-C level programming environment complete with state- of-art solution for debug and tools support for easy software development. "
"VCOP (shown in Figure 2), the Vector/Vision CO- Processor, is an 8-way SIMD engine with two parallel and identical functional units (FUs) per SIMD lane. "
You're right in that it doesn't draw circles, do fills, etc. as primitive operations.
When I speak of AI, I mean hardware Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), like this:
--- Zach N0ZGO
Sent via AMSAT-BB(a)amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program!
View archives of this mailing list at https://mailman.amsat.org/hyperkitty/list/amsat-bb@amsat.org To unsubscribe send an email to amsat-bb-leave(a)amsat.org Manage all of your AMSAT-NA mailing list preferences at https://mailman.amsat.org
I worked on the original Pixar Image Computer from which all subsequent SIMD image architectures are derived. About 35 years ago now. A lot of what the application sheet talks about is driver augmentation, which is mostly formatting camera data for display using the Porter-Duff image algebra, what video folks know as "compositing". The SIMD cores would be usable as vector processors for DSP.
On Fri, Jan 22, 2021 at 12:52 PM Zach Metzinger zmetzing@pobox.com wrote:
On 01/22/21 14:14, Bruce Perens wrote:
The embedded Vision Accelerators aren't really graphics accelerators. They do some important things for DSP that we could potentially leverage, but I haven't been able to tell in short look if they are actually documented so that you can program them, or just are hardware accelerators for a proprietary thing they call Vision pack. See https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6865062
The EVE is optimized to deal with pixel data, which could be input or output. From the paper you cited:
"ARP32, a 32-bit RISC core, is the master controller and programmable frontend of EVE providing the user a full ANSI-C level programming environment complete with state- of-art solution for debug and tools support for easy software development. "
"VCOP (shown in Figure 2), the Vector/Vision CO- Processor, is an 8-way SIMD engine with two parallel and identical functional units (FUs) per SIMD lane. "
You're right in that it doesn't draw circles, do fills, etc. as primitive operations.
When I speak of AI, I mean hardware Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), like this:
--- Zach N0ZGO
Sent via AMSAT-BB(a)amsat.org. AMSAT-NA makes this open forum available to all interested persons worldwide without requiring membership. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the official views of AMSAT-NA. Not an AMSAT-NA member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program!
View archives of this mailing list at https://mailman.amsat.org/hyperkitty/list/amsat-bb@amsat.org To unsubscribe send an email to amsat-bb-leave(a)amsat.org Manage all of your AMSAT-NA mailing list preferences at https://mailman.amsat.org
participants (3)
-
Bruce Perens -
Joseph Armbruster -
Zach Metzinger