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Google has designed a low-power version of its homegrown AI math accelerator, dubbed it the Edge TPU, and promised to ship it to developers by October. Announced at Google Next 2018 today, the ASIC is a cutdown edition of its Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) family of in-house-designed coprocessors. TPUs are used internally at Google to power its machine-learning-based services, or are rentable via its public cloud. These chips are specific[ally] designed for and used to train neural networks and perform inference.
Now the web giant has developed a cut-down inference-only version suitable for running in Internet-of-Things gateways. The idea is you have a bunch of sensors and devices in your home, factory, office, hospital, etc, connected to one of these gateways, which then connects to Google's backend services in the cloud for additional processing.
Inside the gateway is the Edge TPU, plus potentially a graphics processor, and a general-purpose application processor running Linux or Android and Google's Cloud IoT Edge software stack. This stack contains lightweight Tensorflow-based libraries and models that access the Edge TPU to perform AI tasks at high speed in hardware. This work can also be performed on the application CPU and GPU cores, if necessary. You can use your own custom models if you wish.
The stack ensures connections between the gateway and the backend are secure. If you wanted, you could train a neural network model using Google's Cloud TPUs and have the Edge TPUs perform inference locally.
Google announcement. Also at TechCrunch, CNBC, and CNET.
Related: Google's New TPUs are Now Much Faster -- will be Made Available to Researchers
Google Renting Access to Tensor Processing Units (TPUs)
Nvidia V100 GPUs and Google TPUv2 Chips Benchmarked; V100 GPUs Now on Google Cloud
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:31PM (3 children)
Wonder what the pricing will be compared to Nervana [intel.com]
Why are Google marketing the "cloud" when most serious NN models will be privately held and fiercely protected?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:35PM (1 child)
They use TOPS, aka tera-operations per second. But then the Wikipedia lists FLOPS [wikipedia.org] anyway so whatever.
http://hexus.net/tech/news/industry/104299-google-benchmarks-tensor-processing-unit-tpu-chips/ [hexus.net]
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1704/1704.04760.pdf [arxiv.org]
https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/04/05/first-depth-look-googles-tpu-architecture/ [nextplatform.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @05:43PM
Aren't these for their cloud processors, not this inference only chip?
Also have a hunch it'll be YAFSDK (Yet Another Fat SDK) as opposed to the Intel offering which will be a fairly standard toolchain.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 27 2018, @08:54AM
Their business model: you pay them for the cloud to train your NN, download the result into your local (Google made) TPU and use it close to your sensors.
The training is energy intensive, the sensing/recognition needs to be very frugal with the energy available in an IoT.
Bottom line: at no point you are allowed independence from Google.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:34PM (3 children)
Basically, how such computing should be done? Preferably with little to none of the data reaching the central server.
Funny how computing got centralized, and now is slowly getting decentralized again. I'm happy to see tech for that developing, but I worry that data ownership will continue to be centralized.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday July 26 2018, @04:37PM (2 children)
That's the gist of the story. Google and others returning to the edge (as it should be), but trying to maintain some control/lock-in.
If I want to run a bootleg JARVIS or render DeepFake porn, I want to use my own hardware.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Thursday July 26 2018, @05:05PM (1 child)
Yeah, this. I wouldn't touch this with someone else's ten foot pole. It's just another variation on third-party clouds, and just like 3rd party clouds, it's 100% a very, very bad idea.
No thanks. Local solutions much preferred.
(Score: 2) by corey on Thursday July 26 2018, @11:45PM
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday July 26 2018, @06:12PM (3 children)
When I think of IoT I think doorbells, thermostats, toasters, washing machines, etc etc etc. Not sure why my toaster needs an AI, let alone a GPU.
Then again, I'm neither rich nor live in Silly Valley.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday July 26 2018, @06:17PM
Overpowered compared to what? The computer on Apollo One? Sure. My Phone? Doubtful. IoT stuff kind of screams more money than I know what to do with, but perhaps it can produce some useful things.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Thursday July 26 2018, @06:22PM (1 child)
Maybe they're thinking of businesses. Not necessarily improving the lives with random consumer goods, but careful, thoughtful populace instrumentation and control.
How about an automated checkout that matches faces to credit cards and watches to make sure everything is scanned. Computers that identify users by mouse movement and keyboard use. phones that flag out-of-ordinary travel and movement behaviour to the proper oversight and enforcement authorities. roadway nodes that can independently interact with self-driving cars to improve safety based on traffic flow, weather, lighting, and local emergencies. refrigerators that can estimate days-to-heart-failure based on consumption habits and report to the federal insurance oversight committee.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @08:24PM
Wow, if that's the future, I'm not interested. Luckily I'm already mid-60s, so maybe I won't live to see my fridge tattling on my eating habits, or my computer not working after I pull a muscle in my shoulder (and move the mouse differently).
Re a different thread, I'm quite happy with the simple thermostat in my house, and the one in my toaster oven, and in my oven. And the timer in the microwave is also good enough.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday July 26 2018, @06:22PM
If Google can announce the Edge TPU, will Microsoft follow up with the Chrome TPU?
(Score: 2) by leftover on Thursday July 26 2018, @11:10PM
I wonder if this is a bigger version of their AIY Vision Kit. All training data needs to pass through Google and they keep a copy. Instant world-dominating dataset on the cheap.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.