Intel announces the Movidius Myriad X - the world's first vision processing unit

Intel is looking to expand in the artificial intelligence world with their new Myriad X VPU (vision processing unit). The chip was developed by Movidius, a company acquired by Intel back in 2016, especially for the Neural Compute Engine it was working on. The idea behind this endeavor is to offer AI capabilities to everyday devices. Movidius already provides the Fathom Compute Stick that enables deep learning capabilities for embedded devices, but Intel wanted to take this to a new level, where learning algorithms can train themselves to identify images and words or analyze video feeds. The Myriad X brings such capabilities to devices like drones, cameras, robots and VR / AR headsets.

The new VPU is a 16 nm system-on-a-chip that integrates vision accelerators, imaging accelerators, and the Movidius Neural Compute Engine, as well as 16 SHAVE vector processors paired with a CPU. The small chip is able to process up to 4 trillion operations per second, and it has a minimal TDP of 1.5 W. There are two versions of the Myriad X: the MA2085 coming with on-package memory and exposed external memory interface, and the MA2485 that integrates 4 gigabit of in-package LPDDR4 memory. The VPU supports PCIe interfaces, which allows OEMs to integrate several chips in a single device.

Even though Intel has already made the chips available for OEMs, no pricing information is available for the time being.

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