Edge AI Specialist Kneron Expands the KNEO Pi SBC Ecosystem on the Back of Strong Demand

Edge artificial intelligence (AI) specialist Kneron has announced the expansion of its KNEO Pi single-board computer platform, which it says has seen interest from 28,000 users and 3,000 orders since its unveiling in June — and will now be supported by a dedicated developer website with documentation, drivers, and a toolchain in one place.

"A rapid build-out of the edge AI ecosystem is the only way the world's smart devices will be able to access transformative AI performance while controlling costs, reducing energy consumption and prioritizing the highest levels of security," claims Kneron founder and chief executive officer Albert Liu in support of its offerings. "The future of AI can’t rely on cloud services alone. KNEO Pi has already established itself with AI developers, and with its new website."

The KNEO Pi is, as the name suggests, a Raspberry Pi-inspired single-board computer — right down to the familiar 40-pin general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header at the top. Kneron's take on the concept, though, is focused firmly on running energy-efficient machine learning and artificial intelligence workloads at the edge and entirely on-device, and to support that the board is built around Kneron's fourth-generation KDP in-house neural coprocessor.

The KDP included on the board, Kneron says, offers an equivalent performance to four tera-operations per second (TOPS) of compute at INT8 precision — and can run the popular You Only Look Once (YOLO) v5 object detection model at more than 30 frames per second in a 2W power envelope. The board supports simultaneous analysis of four incoming camera feeds, and run KNEO Pi OS — a customized version of Arch Linux that comes with the neural coprocessor drivers and required media codecs preinstalled.

Despite somewhat sedate specifications outside the neural coprocessor — the board comes with 2GB of LPDDR4 RAM, 512MB of SPI NAND flash storage expandable via microSD Card, and a Faste Ethernet port, while the NPU is fed by four Arm Cortex-A55 cores — Kneron says it has received considerable interest, with 3,000 orders since its June unveiling. To support those new users, it has announced an expanded ecosystem focused around a one-stop website for all documentation, drivers, and the software toolchain.

At the same time, the company has announced a "strategic investment" in Taiwanese edge AI specialist Innovedeus, with which it hopes to expand the KNEO Pi and KDP platform to the education sector — teaching a new generation about on-device machine learning and artificial intelligence.

"Kneron’s investment in Innovedus is predicated on the belief that education is the critical first step for the real-world application of AI technology," Liu says of the deal, terms of which have not been disclosed. "The Innovedus team combines educational insight with hands-on system implementation, and our partnership will increase our ability to allow younger people to experience and apply Kneron's chips in practical settings."

More information on the KNEO Pi is available on the newly-launched website.