Google's Raspberry Pi-like Coral: Meet new Coral Dev Board Mini and tiny Accelerator
Google has unveiled the Coral Dev Board Mini and a new Accelerator module that join its existing lineup of Coral hardware aimed at allowing developers to run machine-learning models locally on edge-network devices.
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At the core of all its Coral products is the Google Edge TPU ASIC, responsible for processing data on the $149 Coral Dev Board and the Coral USB accelerator.
Attached to sensors like a camera, the devices allow developers to build products for sorting and identifying objects, tracking hand movements, and face detection.
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Importantly, all this process happens on the device without the need to transmit data to the cloud.
Google brought Coral out of beta in October and in November released a new version of its Mendel operation system that's based on Debian 10 Buster.
The new Coral Accelerator Module is smaller than a US one cent coin, measuring 10mm by 15mm. The package includes an Edge TPU ASIC that exposes PCIe and USB interfaces to help developers integrate it with custom printed circuit board designs.
The Coral Dev Board Mini is a smaller, cheaper and lower-power sibling to the $149 Coral Dev Board. Instead of an NXP SoC, the Mini combines the new Coral Accelerator Module with a MediaTek 8167s SoC, which consists of a quad-core Arm Cortex-A35 CPU.
There's also an integrated GPU, an Edge TPU, 2 GB DDR3L RAM, 8 GB eMMC, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It features a 40-pin GPIO header and two USB Type-C based on USB 2.0. There's also a 3.5mm headphone jack, and connectors for camera, display and speakers.
According to Google, the Coral Dev Board Mini is tuned to support 720P video encoding and decoding, is highly suited to computer vision applications.
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Google hasn't revealed pricing for the Coral Accelerator Module or the Coral Dev Board Mini but says both will be available in the first half of 2020.
Google has also expanded memory options for the Coral system-on-module, an attachable component that can be bought standalone for $114. The SoM includes Google's Edge TPU with the NXP IMX8M SoC, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, memory, and storage.
The Coral SoM was previously only available with 1GB of RAM, but is now available with 2GB and 4GB LPDDR4 RAM.
The Coral Dev Board Mini is a smaller, cheaper and lower-power sibling to the $149 Coral Dev Board.
The new Coral Accelerator Module is smaller than a US one cent coin, but includes an Edge TPU ASIC.
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