The Intel Movidius Neural Compute Stick (NCS) is a neural network computation engine in a USB stick form factor. It’s based on the Myriad-2 chip, referred to by Movidius as a VPU or Visual Processing Unit, basically a processor that was specifically designed to accelerate neural network computations, and with relatively low power requirements. The NCS is a great match for single board computers like the Raspberry Pi, the Beagle Bone and especially the PYNQ-Z1. Now these boards can all run software based neural networks, but not very quickly, so their potential in fast moving applications is limited. When paired with a Movidius NCS, they can achieve tremendously better inference times by offloading all of the heavy neural network computation to the Myriad chip.
[Read More]Setting up the PYNQ-Z1 for the Intel Movidius Neural Compute Stick
