Coral Is Google's Quiet Initiative To Enable AI Without the Cloud (theverge.com) 8
Google is working to improve the speed and security of on-device AI through a little-known initiative called Coral. The Verge reports: "Traditionally, data from [AI] devices was sent to large compute instances, housed in centralized data centers where machine learning models could operate at speed," Vikram Tank, product manager at Coral, explained to The Verge over email. "Coral is a platform of hardware and software components from Google that help you build devices with local AI -- providing hardware acceleration for neural networks ... right on the edge device." To meet customers' needs Coral offers two main types of products: accelerators and dev boards meant for prototyping new ideas, and modules that are destined to power the AI brains of production devices like smart cameras and sensors. In both cases, the heart of the hardware is Google's Edge TPU, an ASIC chip optimized to run lightweight machine learning algorithms -- a (very) little brother to the water-cooled TPU used in Google's cloud servers.
While its hardware can be used by lone engineers to create fun projects (Coral offers guides on how to build an AI marshmallow-sorting machine and smart bird feeder, for example), the long-term focus, says Tank, is on enterprise customers in industries like the automotive world and health care. Although Coral is targeting the world of enterprise, the project actually has its roots in Google's "AIY" range of do-it-yourself machine learning kits, says Tank. Launched in 2017 and powered by Raspberry Pi computers, AIY kits let anyone build their own smart speakers and smart cameras, and they were a big success in the STEM toys and maker markets. Tank says the AIY team quickly noticed that while some customers just wanted to follow the instructions and build the toys, others wanted to cannibalize the hardware to prototype their own devices. Coral was created to cater to these customers. The Coral team says it's trying to differentiate itself from the competition by tightly integrating its hardware with Google's ecosystem of AI services. "Coral is so tightly integrated with Google's AI ecosystem that its Edge TPU-powered hardware only works with Google's machine learning framework, TensorFlow, a fact that rivals in the AI edge market The Verge spoke to said was potentially a limiting factor," the report says.
"Coral products process specifically for their platform [while] our products support all the major AI frameworks and models in the market," a spokesperson for AI edge firm Kneron told The Verge. (Kneron said there was "no negativity" in its assessment and that Google's entry into the market was welcome as it "validates and drives innovation in the space.")
While its hardware can be used by lone engineers to create fun projects (Coral offers guides on how to build an AI marshmallow-sorting machine and smart bird feeder, for example), the long-term focus, says Tank, is on enterprise customers in industries like the automotive world and health care. Although Coral is targeting the world of enterprise, the project actually has its roots in Google's "AIY" range of do-it-yourself machine learning kits, says Tank. Launched in 2017 and powered by Raspberry Pi computers, AIY kits let anyone build their own smart speakers and smart cameras, and they were a big success in the STEM toys and maker markets. Tank says the AIY team quickly noticed that while some customers just wanted to follow the instructions and build the toys, others wanted to cannibalize the hardware to prototype their own devices. Coral was created to cater to these customers. The Coral team says it's trying to differentiate itself from the competition by tightly integrating its hardware with Google's ecosystem of AI services. "Coral is so tightly integrated with Google's AI ecosystem that its Edge TPU-powered hardware only works with Google's machine learning framework, TensorFlow, a fact that rivals in the AI edge market The Verge spoke to said was potentially a limiting factor," the report says.
"Coral products process specifically for their platform [while] our products support all the major AI frameworks and models in the market," a spokesperson for AI edge firm Kneron told The Verge. (Kneron said there was "no negativity" in its assessment and that Google's entry into the market was welcome as it "validates and drives innovation in the space.")
Oblig (Score:1)
Nah, still don't trust google (Score:2)
While I applaud the general concept of getting computing back into the hands (and control) of the nominal owner of the device, I still don't trust Google with anything that can communicate data, and at this point, I probably never will.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, Google has revealed its true colors a while ago (to no big surprise of anybody that is at least a bit conversant with human nature and human history).
The simple implication is "large corporation or government" => "Do NOT trust them!"
If anything, if anybody ever claims "don't be evil" or such as a motto, trust them _less_.
Forced not Quite (Score:1)
Basically due to Google well being blatanly evil and invading everyone's privacy at every single oppurtunity, even bloody medical records, their cloud has be tainted to shite, it can not be trusted and as such they are trying to pull their privacy invasive stuff off the cloud and loading it directly into the device and using M$'s bullshit excuses telemetary services to send compact compilation of the data analysis of your privacy to their internel services for data mining and targeted psychological manipula
Little Known? (Score:2)
This is egocentric even for google. (Score:2)
"Traditionally, data from [AI] devices was sent to large compute instances, housed in centralized data centers where machine learning models could operate at speed,"
Uh... no.
Some people do that but it's hardly "traditional". I know of people doing that but I've never personally met anyone doing it. There's a metric fuckton of ML stuff out there which doesn't assume automatically that google is the centre of the universe.
I mean you've got discrete GPUs for PCs, on the high end, things like Nvidia Jetson and
Re: (Score:2)
I got the USB one for Xmas (Score:2)