The Raspberry Pi team has recently announced an exciting expansion to their AI product line with the introduction of the new Raspberry Pi AI HAT+. This latest addition includes the same Hailo AI accelerator technology featured in the previously released AI Kit, but now offers two different performance options.
Users can choose between a 13 TOPS (tera-operations per second) model priced at $70, which includes the Hailo-8L accelerator, or opt for the more powerful 26 TOPS model, equipped with the Hailo-8 accelerator and priced at $110. The key difference between the two is that the 26 TOPS version allows for more sophisticated neural networks to be run in real-time, delivering enhanced inference performance.
As Naushir Patuck explains in the official announcement, “The 26 TOPS model also allows users to run multiple neural networks simultaneously at high frame rates. For example, you can perform object detection, pose estimation, and subject segmentation at the same time on a live camera feed with the 26 TOPS AI HAT+.”
Both versions of the AI HAT+ are fully backward compatible with the AI Kit, and according to Patuck, the integration of the Hailo accelerator into the main PCB allows it to handle more demanding AI workloads more efficiently.
After a series of recent AI product releases, Raspberry Pi now offers a wide range of options for running inference workloads. For tasks that are sparse, quantized, or intermittent, the native Raspberry Pi platform is sufficient, but for more intensive demands, the AI HAT+ and AI Camera hardware make Raspberry Pi a powerful embedded host.
This announcement comes just a day after the introduction of a new line of Raspberry Pi-branded NVMe SSDs, available as standalone processors or bundled with the M.2 HAT+ in ready-to-use SSD kits.