Raspberry Pi, the startup behind credit-card-sized computers popular among amateurs and educators, partnered with Israeli chipmaker Hailo to democratize artificial intelligence (AI). This partnership intends to install AI processing on Raspberry Pi devices.

AI models traditionally use cloud-based computing systems to handle massive volumes of data and make assumptions. This strategy is not always necessary as many applications, like a video system that unlocks gates without the cloud, work fine.

According to Interesting Engineering, Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton remarked that the firm's partnership with Hailo "empowers" hobbyists and industrial customers by allowing them to integrate AI into "cost-effective and power-efficient solutions." The top executive also noted they wanted to help enthusiasts access means to improve their creative projects.

The new AI Kit has a Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ and Hailo-8L M.2 AI accelerator module. According to a corporate release, the Hailo-8L outperforms existing edge processors with 13 tera-operations per second (TOPS). This increased processing capability allows Raspberry Pi devices to run more complicated AI applications.

Empowering Users

Moreover, Hailo is establishing an online developer community in response to growing user numbers. Tutorials, FAQs, and a forum for connecting, sharing code, and collaborating will be available on this platform.

Hailo CEO and co-founder Orr Danon said their collaboration with Raspberry Pi "marks a new era in computing" powered by their "high-performance AI processing technology."

At upcoming industry events in China and Germany, developers and tech fans may sample the Raspberry Pi AI Kit.

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The Raspberry Pi AI Kit, with an NPU, lets the Raspberry Pi 5 do complex AI tasks including object and facial recognition, human stance analysis, and more. Offloading AI computations to the NPU frees up the Raspberry Pi 5's CPU for other important tasks, improving project efficiency and power.

Check out how Raspberry Pi AI Kit detects objects in this video:

Moreover, the Raspberry Pi AI Kit works with the Raspberry Pi Active Cooler to minimize overheating under intense workloads, per ZDNet. 

Raspberry Pi Looks Forward to More Collaborations with Hailo

CEO Eben Upton stresses the board's AI experience despite the AI Kit for the Raspberry Pi 5's speed gain.
He remarked that users of Raspberry Pi were "already leveraging" AI technology for several tasks even before it emerged as a "major trend." He mentioned a Japanese cucumber farm that used a Raspberry Pi 3 to separate prickly cucumbers with 70% accuracy, a sorting method that uses cloud-based AI.

Notably, the Raspberry Pi can now run some AI tasks without internet access through the power of the AI Kit.

Upton said Raspberry Pi 5 is apt for smaller AI models "and there's been progress in running optimized and quantized large language models (LLMs) on the device." However, he admitted that models like the LLaMa 3 70B require massive computing power, so some activities would still require cloud processing, as reported by The Register.

While present use cases are limited, Upton expects the Raspberry Pi 5 AI's price to spur "exponential growth" in AI applications and solutions.

Upton hinted at future AI hardware partnerships and the long-term Hailo alliance, noting that he would be "disappointed" if their collaboration would not be extended.

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