Thundercomm, a three way partnership between ThunderSoft and Qualcomm Applied sciences, has formally launched the RUBIK Pi, a single-board computer-style machine concentrating on on-device synthetic intelligence (AI) and machine studying (ML) workloads powered by the Qualcomm QCS6490 system-on-chip — and it is gained a numerical suffix in assist of some design tweaks since its unveiling, turning into the RUBIK Pi 3.
“RUBIK Pi 3 is a significant milestone for Thundercomm in on-device AI,” claims Thundercomm’s Pier Zhang of the brand new gadget’s normal availability, introduced in the course of the Shopper Electronics Present (CES) in Las Vegas this week. “It is not simply high-performance {hardware} — it is an accelerator for innovation, empowering builders and enterprises to carry concepts to life and improve effectivity.”
“Qualcomm Applied sciences is dedicated to delivering cutting-edge computing capabilities for builders,” provides Qualcomm’s Manvinder Singh of the partnership between the 2 corporations to carry the machine to market. “Powered by the Qualcomm QCS6490 processor, RUBIK Pi 3 showcases the chances of on-device AI. We stay up for working with Thundercomm to foster a thriving world developer ecosystem.”
Thundercomm unveiled the unique RUBIK Pi again in October final 12 months, promising to open pre-orders in November for what grew to become an limited-run “early chicken” launch. Some {hardware} tweaks to the design, which is a system-on-module mounted to a service board somewhat than a real single-board pc, adopted — protecting the bottom specs totally intact however delivering minor quality-of-life tweaks based mostly on suggestions from early adopters.
The board has acquired just a few tweaks since final 12 months’s unveiling, and in consequence has earned a “3” suffix. (📷: Thundercomm)
Like the unique, the RUBIK Pi 3 is powered by Qualcomm’s QCS6490 system-on-chip — giving it Kryo 670 processor with 4 Arm Cortex-A78 and 4 Cortex-A55 cores, with just one Cortex-A78 core reaching the utmost 2.7GHz clock velocity, an Adreno 643L graphics processor operating at as much as 821MHz, and a Hexagon machine studying accelerator able to delivering as much as 12 tera-operations per second (TOPS) of dense minimum-precision compute for on-device synthetic intelligence.
To this, Thundercomm has added contains 8GB of LPDDR4x RAM and 128GB of on-board storage and a service that breaks out ports together with a 4k30-capable HDMI 1.4 show output, a 4k60-capable USB Kind-C connector with DisplayPort, two MIPI Digicam Serial Interfaces, gigabit Ethernet, two USB 3.0 Kind-A ports, an M.2 M-key slot, and a Raspberry Pi-style 40-pin general-purpose enter/output (GPIO) header, plus a module for Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.2 wi-fi connectivity.
The corporate has additionally been laborious at work on the software program facet of issues, broadening compatibility: the RUBIK Pi 3, Thundercom, says, now helps an alpha construct of Google’s Android 13 working system in addition to an early entry Debian Linux picture, on prime of its present assist for Qualcomm Linux. There’s additionally compatibility with “chosen fashions” from Qualcomm’s AI Hub mannequin zoo, and the promise of the board being “totally suitable with Raspberry Pi 5 official equipment.”
The corporate is displaying the machine off at CES with a variety of reside demos, together with robotic rock-paper-scissors. (📷: Thundercomm)
Thundercomm is showcasing the RUBIK Pi 3 on the Shopper Digital Present (CES) in Las Vegas this week, with demos together with driving a robotic hand whereas performing colour notion, face detection, and gesture recognition duties — together with the flexibility to problem guests to a sport of rock-paper-scissors — and a RUBIC Pi 3-powered Polaroid digicam that includes an on-device imaginative and prescient language mannequin (VLM) for picture evaluation. A 3rd demo reveals the board operating 4 fashions from the Qualcomm AI hub concurrently: picture classification, object detection, pose detection, and picture segmentation.
The Rubic Pi 3 is now out there to order from the Thundercomm web site at $179; a small variety of “beta model” boards had been nonetheless out there on the time of writing, at a reduced $159.
