By Looking to amp up the Raspberry Pi with more power for AI? The RPI AI Kit has just been announced.
RPI, Where’s the AI?
If there’s one thing we previously pointed out when comparing the latest Raspberry Pi 5 to other SBCs is that it’s lacking any real AI acceleration. While the Beagle Y AI has about 4TOPS, and the wallet busting NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano has about 40 TOPS, the Raspberry Pi was all but left out.
Fear not. The new Raspberry Pi AI Kit is here to help you accelerate those AI tasks without having to switch to another board or pay an eye watering $500.
Hardware
The AI Hat is actually an M.2 board that sits on top of the the Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT. This lets the HAILO AI Acceleration module (which does the neural network inference) do it’s job, providing 13 TOPS of performance. The module used is a Hailo-8L Entry-Level device that has half the TOPS of its higher end brother.
The Raspberry Pi AI Kit will allow GPIO pass through the 40pin RPI Header, so if you have other boards or connections, you can still.
Performance and Value
While it doesn’t come close to matching the $500 NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano in performance, at a price of $70 for the Raspberry Pi AI Kit, you’re paying essentially $5.3 per TOP vs. the $12.5 per TOP offered by NVIDIA. Clearly the Raspberry PI AI Kit is a much better value, unless you have to have those 40 TOPs (for Copilot compatibility or some other reason).
Cana Kit is selling the AI Kit with an extended Turbine Case, Fan and Heat Sink that will help you keep the system cool, although you can still use the Raspberry Pi 5 with the Active cooler since the 40-pin header that’s used to provide mechanical support is 16mm. This provides the spacing needed to fit everything together.
Ordering
We expect this board will be quite popular because it really adds AI performance at a reasonable cost. The board is available for preorder now and will be shipping in August 2024.