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Doubling down on the edge with Coral’s new accelerator

Moving into the fall, the Coral platform continues to grow with the release of the M.2 Accelerator with Dual Edge TPU. Its first application is in Google’s Series One room kits where it helps to remove interruptions and makes the audio clearer for better video meetings. To help even more folks build products with Coral intelligence, we’re dropping the prices on several of our products. And for those folks that are looking to level up their at home video production, we’re sharing a demo of a pose based AI director to make multi-camera video easier to make.

Coral M.2 Accelerator with Dual Edge TPU

The newest addition to our product family brings two Edge TPU co-processors to systems in an M.2 E-key form factor. While the design requires a dual bus PCIe M.2 slot, it brings enhanced ML performance (8 TOPS) to tasks such as running two models in parallel or pipelining one large model across both Edge TPUs.

The ability to scale across multiple edge accelerators isn’t limited to only two Edge TPUs. As edge computing expands to local data centers, cell towers, and gateways, multi-Edge TPU configurations will be required to help process increasingly sophisticated ML models. Coral allows the use of a single toolchain to create models for one or more Edge TPUs that can address many different future configurations.

A great example of how the Coral M.2 Accelerator with Dual Edge TPU is being used is in the Series One meeting room kits for Google Meet.

The new Series One room kits for Google Meet run smarter with Coral intelligence

Google’s new Series One room kits use our Coral M.2 Accelerator with Dual Edge TPU to bring enhanced audio clarity to video meetings. TrueVoice®, a multi-channel noise cancellation technology, minimizes distractions to ensure every voice is heard with up to 44 channels of echo and noise cancellation, making distracting sounds like snacking or typing on a keyboard a concern of the past.

Enabling the clearest possible communication in challenging environments was the target for the Google Meet hardware team. The consideration of what makes a challenging environment was not limited to unusually noisy environments, such as lunchrooms doubling as conference rooms. Any conference room can present challenging acoustics that make it difficult for all participants to be heard.

The secret to clarity without expensive and cumbersome equipment is to use virtual audio channels and AI driven sound isolation. Read more about how Coral was used to enhance and future-proof the innovative design.

Expanding the AI edge

Earlier this year, we reduced the prices of our prototyping devices and sensors. We are excited to share further price drops on more of our products. Our System-on-Module is now available for $99.99, and our Mini PCIe Accelerator, M.2 Accelerator A+E Key, and M.2 Accelerator B+M key are now available at $24.99. We hope this lower price will make our edge AI more accessible to more creative minds around the world. Later, this month our SoM offering will also expand to include 2 and 4GB RAM options.

Multi-cam with AI

As we expand our platform and product family, we continue to keep new edge AI use cases in mind. We are continually inspired by our developer community’s experimentation and implementations. When recently faced with the challenges of multicam video production from home, Markku Lepistö, Solutions Architect at Google Cloud, created this real-time pose-based multicam tool he so aptly dubbed, AI Director.

We love seeing such unique implementations of on-device ML and invite you to share your own projects and feedback at [email protected].

For a list of worldwide distributors, system integrators and partners, visit the Coral partnerships page. Please visit Coral.ai to discover more about our edge ML platform.

16 Sep, 2020
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By editor
AI, Artificial Intelligence, AutoML, Coral, Edge TPU, GCP, Google, IoT, machine learning, TensorFlow, TensorFlow Lite

Applications are open for Google for Startups Accelerator in Japan

Posted by Takuo Suzuki, Developer Relations Program Manager

The Google for Startups Accelerator helps founders across the globe solve for important economic and societal challenges, while helping them grow and scale their business. Due to the continued success of the program around the world, we are pleased to open up applications for our third Accelerator class in Japan, commencing January 2021. Applications will remain open until October 30, 2020.

This accelerator is designed for established startups across Japan using technology to help solve important social and environmental issues, and that contribute to the Japanese economy. This includes (but is not limited to) startups tackling:

Ageing society and declining workforce
Energy, environment, and sustainability
Rural revitalization
Medicine, health, and well-being
Education
Diversity, inclusion, and social equity

Google for Startups Accelerators provide support to later-stage companies that have already launched their product, and have strong market-fit and potential to scale rapidly in the future. Startups in the program benefit from tailored Google mentorship, product advice & credits, technical workshops, and by getting connected to other founders, VCs, and industry experts.

Each participating startup selected for the Google for Startups Accelerator program will join a 500+ company alumni network of startups from around the world, such as Selan, with their product Omister (Class #2 Japan), is improving education & childcare in Japan by providing bilingual instructors for children, and mDoc, (Class #1 Sustainability, Europe), a Nigerian startup helping people in West Africa with chronic diseases get treatment via their n app.

In summary:

Suitable for startups solving for societal or environmental issues in Japan
Application open: September 15, 2020
Application close: October 30, 2020
Announcement of selected startups: December 2020
Program runs from late-January 2021 to end of April 2021 (planned)
Please refer to the website for further information and to apply.