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  • Author Author: shabaz
  • Date Created: 27 Feb 2019 4:19 PM Date Created
  • Views 3233 views
  • Likes 16 likes
  • Comments 10 comments
  • bbai
  • bb-ai
  • beaglebone ai
  • bbb
  • beagleboard
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Another BeagleBone - BeagleBone AI!

shabaz
shabaz
27 Feb 2019

Hopefully we'll hear more soon, but there appears to be another BeagleBone board launched at Embedded World, with the same form-factor as the BeagleBone Black.

It's called the BeagleBone AI. I'm guessing it's not a replacement and won't be anywhere near as cost-reduced as the BBB and its variants (for example there is 16GB of eMMC on-board on the BB-AI), the board looks very useful for working with image recognition or other video processing.

(Photo from the Beagleboard website, will replace with a better photo if I find one):

image

The main chip is TI's AM5729, which doesn't have a datasheet yet, but appears to be the same or very similar to AM5728. The diagram below highlights some interesting features. There are a lot of processing sub-systems.

The applications processor portion is a dual-core Cortex-A15 (dark red) running at 1.5GHz. There are 2D and dual 3D graphics processors (shown in green), plus a couple of DSPs (orange).  There is a Video Processing Engine (VPE) shown in brown, for stuff like basic image scaling.

There is still the PRU capability shown in purple (2 x dual-core PRU), but there's also a couple of dual-core Cortex-M4 processors for real-time operations too (shown in blue). This is nice, I''m guessing it allows for real-time computation, and high-speed low-level protocol handling, to be separated if desired.

 

What wasn't on the block diagram but I've added it in yellow, are four EVE embedded vision engines! These are apparently controlled via normal C programming. Open CL is possible, and some other API maybe.

Unlike the older NEON (which was a basic, general SIMD processor for doing operations on a few bytes of memory in a single instruction - some further description here: BBB, NEON and making Tintin bigger  ), EVE simplifies things so that you don't need to program in complex SIMD instructions, it handles it for you. Plus it is specially designed for video operations, for example object identification. You can get it to identify shapes or objects in real-time live video really efficiently, at low power, since the key building-blocks that the image recognition algorithms use are implemented in hardware. I can't find much info on it yet, but I have not google'd it a lot so far. It could be useful for object identification while driving, if you're designing the next Tesla.

 

Also, the BB-AI brings out USB 3.0 speeds, with a USC Type C connector. And GigEth. Plus wireless (2.4 and 5GHz) including 802.11ac! so super-high throughput hopefully. Also supports BLE as I understand.

 

image

If anyone is at Embedded World, or has more information to share, it would be great to see it!

 

Texas Instruments Deep Learning (TIDL)

There is a framework to make use of the DSP and EVE processors, if desired, for some computer vision types of scenarios.

According to a TI Deep Learning overview PDF it can be used for some popular things like classifying objects, and detecting multiple different objects and their locations.

image

Some more examples of this:

image

(The images above are from that PDF document).

It can be done in live video streams, as shown here, screenshot from video at https://e2e.ti.com/support/processors/f/791/t/710226?TDA3-Our-TIDL-car-detection-on-TDA3X-are-there-any-methods-to-incre… :

image

The main resource on learning the TIDL framework is the Processor SDK TI Deep Learning Documentation.

 

 

 

Edited 28th Feb 2019 - I'd mistyped the TI part code in the text above, it is corrected now.

Edited 3rd March 2019 - Added a bit on TI Deep Learning (TIDL)

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Top Comments

  • gecoz
    gecoz over 6 years ago +9
    This is one very interesting board! I hope all the goodies don't push the price too high. BTW, there is also another interesting open source board launched at Embedded World: the S7-Mini, based on the…
  • fmilburn
    fmilburn over 6 years ago +8
    According to this site the cost will be ~$100 and it will be available in mid to late 2Q: https://blog.hackster.io/the-new-beaglebone-ai-b3eea55e09f2 RE: AI BeagleBone AI makes it easy to explore how artificial…
  • johnbeetem
    johnbeetem over 6 years ago in reply to Problemchild +6
    Problemchild wrote: Which bit was the AI part then Shabaz it seems to have a unit for everything !!? I think the Embedded Vision Engines are the AI part. In the USA, "AI" primarily means "self-driving…
  • mfetting
    mfetting over 5 years ago in reply to johnbeetem

    Imagine the auto knowing how fast to approach an intersection to avoid stopping.  The auto repair and traffic light industries will be changed dramatically.

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  • shabaz
    shabaz over 6 years ago in reply to gsgill112

    Hi Gurinder,

     

    Thanks for the info! Looking forward to the board release and tools.

    From what little I've read so far, I'm really excited about trying out the EVE processor's capabilities.

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  • gsgill112
    gsgill112 over 6 years ago

    Indeed I guess it is an industry trend for pushing AI capability in SBC's. It is excellent for Edge computing and I am just waiting to see how optimized the Sw will be for the board.

     

    Just for Fun The following Tweet made by Jason Kridner @Jadon

    It is a yet-to-be-announced part, AM5728 with 4 EVEs. AM5749 has 2 EVEs. Quietly, BeagleBoard-X15 rev C also has AM5729 and now the tools to make some use of EVEs are available. More in development.
    And More Images image Just for FuN image
    imageimageimageimage
    Regards,
    GS Gill
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  • fmilburn
    fmilburn over 6 years ago in reply to shabaz

    I am hopeful that there will be some training and good examples.  The preinstalled tools / API could make it potentially easier to get started and use.  Would be nice to see a RoadTest :-)

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  • shabaz
    shabaz over 6 years ago in reply to fmilburn

    Interesting.. $100 is slightly lower-cost than I would have guessed. Definitely not cheap, but I guess it's actually great value to those who need the capabilities, considering how many processors there are in there. DSP dev-boards alone used to be pricey.

    As you say, I think the AI part is describing some possible types of uses people could consider for the board, perhaps with lots of local real-time data processing/algorithms, good connectivity/throughput, and intensive data sources like cameras.

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