Movidius

Movidius Ltd.

Company type	Subsidiary
Industry	Semiconductor
Founded	1 January 2005 (2005-01-01) in Dublin, Ireland
Founder	Sean Mitchell, David Moloney, Val Muresan
Fate	Acquired by Intel
Headquarters	San Mateo , United States
Key people	Remi El-Ouazzane (CEO from May 2013)
Products	Low-power processors for computer vision (Myriad 2, Myriad X, Neural Compute Stick)
Parent	Intel

Movidius Ltd. was a company located in San Mateo, California, that specialized in designing low-power processors tailored for computer vision applications. After being acquired by Intel in September 2016, its product line has continued to be offered under the Movidius brand name.

Company history

Established in 2005 in Dublin, Ireland by Sean Mitchell, David Moloney, and Val Muresan, Movidius secured close to $90 million in funding between 2006 and 2016. In May 2013, Remi El-Ouazzane took on the role of CEO. The firm collaborated with Google starting January 2016, contributing technology to Google's Project Tango. Intel announced its acquisition of Movidius in September 2016, aiming to incorporate Movidius’ computer vision solutions into its existing technology portfolio.

Myriad 2

The Myriad 2 is a multi-core vision processing unit engineered for devices with limited power availability. The Fathom USB device includes a Myriad 2 chip, providing accelerated vision processing capabilities for ARM-based platforms such as personal computers, drones, robots, IoT gadgets, and video surveillance equipment. It achieves performance ranging from 80 to 150 GFLOPS while consuming only about 1 watt of power.

Myriad X

The third iteration of Movidius’ vision processing units is Intel’s Myriad X VPU, which incorporates a Neural Compute Engine—a specialized hardware component designed to accelerate deep learning inference tasks.

Neural Compute Stick

The Intel Movidius Neural Compute Stick (NCS) is a small form-factor device that supports the development of deep learning models at the edge of networks. It employs the Myriad 2 VPU technology found in devices such as security cameras, gesture-recognition drones, and industrial machine vision systems. The NCS is compatible with machine learning frameworks like TensorFlow and Caffe.

Released in November 2018, the second-generation Intel Neural Compute Stick 2 (NCS 2) features the Myriad X VPU and delivers up to eight times greater AI inference performance compared to the original. It works seamlessly with the Intel Distribution of OpenVINO toolkit for efficient deployment of neural network models.

With USB connectivity, the NCS enables fast prototyping and implementation of deep neural network applications without relying on cloud services, making it suitable for real-time, energy-efficient on-device processing.

Uses

• The Google Clips camera utilizes the Myriad 2 VPU.
• Intel RealSense Tracking Camera T265 incorporates the Myriad 2 chip.
• Since 2016, DJI’s Mavic drones have been equipped with the Myriad 2 VPU.
• The Ryze Tello programmable drone uses Mavic software under license and features the Myriad 2 VPU.
• ComBox Technology employs the Myriad X processor in its x64 PCIe Blade board designed for convolutional neural network inference within data centers.

See also

• MPSoC
• Coprocessor
• Convolutional neural network