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Second version of HoloLens HPU will incorporate AI coprocessor

microsoft.com

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Re: Second version of HoloLens HPU will incorporate AI coprocessor

#41

Post by neurotech1 »

guimarin wrote: post #33
akvadrako wrote: post #8

Any idea who makes it? It's probably close in architecture to GPUs, the kind of thing Nvidia and AMD are positioned to capitalise on.

Altera, an Intel subsidiary. [1] 1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-24/quest-for...

Microsoft are using Intel/Altera FPGAs in the datacenter, and not likely for mass produced devices like this.

While it is possible they are using FPGAs for the Hololens Processing Unit, I seriously doubt it. The FPGA needed to exceed the performance of a high-end mobile GPU (OpenCL/CUDA for Deep Learning/AI) would have an excessive power consumption for a mobile device.

Another factor is that higher end FPGAs are expensive ($200+ wholesale) and typically cost thousands each, and not suited to a mass produced consumer device.

As for who made this HPU, I'd say AMD helped design it and GlobalFoundries (or maybe TSMC) are doing the production.

Re: Second version of HoloLens HPU will incorporate AI coprocessor

#42

Post by WorldMaker »

ramshanker wrote: post #3

I remember HoloLens being announced to be available in "windows 10 timeframe". Still awaiting (EDIT:) Cheaper consumer version.

The "cheaper consumer version" focus for now seems to be on the Windows 10 Mixed Reality goggles coming out in the Fall. Yes, it's not HoloLens displays (it's classic LCD screens strapped to your face) or standalone computer (it's tethered to a PC), but it is cheaper and it will be consumer focused in the Fall (and it will use most of the same Windows platform support and niceties like inside-out tracking).

Re: Second version of HoloLens HPU will incorporate AI coprocessor

#43

Post by neurotech1 »

arcanus wrote: post #16
akvadrako wrote: post #8

Any idea who makes it? It's probably close in architecture to GPUs, the kind of thing Nvidia and AMD are positioned to capitalise on.

I suspect it will have more in common with mobile GPUs than the big iron ASICs that come from NVIDIA or AMD.

IMHO Its most likely a variant of the AMD GPU or APU, because it would take some major differentiation before nVidia would do a largely custom core processor, even for Microsoft.

nVidia's Tegra Xavier SoC is under development, with the Volta GPU architecture that would include the Tensor core which is specifically intended for deep learning and AI applications.

Re: Second version of HoloLens HPU will incorporate AI coprocessor

#44

Post by hatsunearu »

ratbr wrote: post #10

Serious question: what is an AI coprocessor technically? Some machine learnt models burned on a chip? Or some kind of a neural net with updatable weights?

A whole butt ton of GPU-style FMA and low precision float multiply ALUs would be my guess

Re: Second version of HoloLens HPU will incorporate AI coprocessor

#45

Post by bitL »

deelowe wrote: post #13
dsr_ wrote: post #2

Is it time to recognize that "AI" is the meaningless buzzword of 2017? "Nothing is cooler because it is cyber." -- J.D. Falk, RIP.

How is AI meaningless? I mean, I guess the term can be seen as silly, but I mentally map it to "statistical computing." [edit] Since I'm getting down votes, can someone clarify? I wasn't being contrarian with the above comment. Is my mental map of what AI means as an industry term incorrect?

"Statistical computing" is kinda outdated and stems from misunderstanding what ML is and the past reliance on some well-known statistical methods. Look at it as a parallelizable non-linear optimization able to reduce dimensionality by employing cool tricks and surprisingly efficient in some real-world tasks. If you just take a general, fully-connected DNN, it wouldn't work at all; those tricks like CNN/RNN/LSTM/GAN make it all work within a narrow setup of hyperparameters.

Re: Second version of HoloLens HPU will incorporate AI coprocessor

#46

Post by cmac2992 »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #12

I used a Hololens and it was awesome (it fit over my glasses). Inference on Hololens could make you do so much more. Maybe you could use it to take scans of parts from a CNC or the CNC tool and create a system that could tell you if a similar piece will fail in the future. From what I have seen compared to Google Glass I think it could be possible for richer interactions and also it uses both eyes. But, I haven't hea…

One of the best Enterprise uses I've heard for hololens is measuring spaces. The voices of VR podcast described a company that installs stair lift. Before theyd have to have multiple people come and take lots of measurements before the install. Now it's just one person who can get all measurements in less than 15 minutes.

Re: Second version of HoloLens HPU will incorporate AI coprocessor

#48

Post by Pigo »

aantix wrote: post #27
Pigo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We got a couple at my company and I've built some protoypes for it, and threw up a little blog for it. The cool thing is the HoloToolkit which seems to be maintained by some xbox developers, and scripts all the functionality you need to get off the ground. The hard part has been coming up with prototypes that go beyond a cool experience, and solve some customer's problem. It doesn't recognize what it's looking at, as…

What is it about the beta Skype app that is so compelling?

The best possible business apps, including the Thyssenkrupp promo, revolved around conferencing with people in real time in an augmented reality space. Someone can help you while viewing what you're seeing, and interact with you using holograms, files from your OneDrive, and of course video chat. The Skype demo is by far the best implementation I've seen of this, and it's designed really well imo. The other user does have to download a skype plugin, but then they are able to interact with your space.

I've yet to test it with two devices, but there's a lot of shared experience functionality in the HoloToolkit.

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