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Comment by asadalt | Hacker News Reader

if they really want to bet on robotics, I want them to release a $10 variant of jetson board.

For 10 USD you get an ESP32S3 board, which can do basic computer vision tasks. For example using OpenMV or emlearn-micropython. For 15-20 USD you can get a board that includes an OV2640 camera. Examples would be XIAO ESP32S3 Sense, LilyGo T Camera S3 or "ESP32-S3-CAM" board from misc manufacturers.

yes that’s what i am working on these days but there is a need for a generally available neural chip (see google’s coral as one attempt). in my tests, esp32s3 is very very slow for any model with conv2d involved.

i just want a tiiiny gpu for $10 so i can run smaller models at higher speed than possible with xtensa/rp2040 having limited simd support etc.

Are you utilizing the SIMD and acceleration instructions in the S3? What kind of performance are you seeing?

Neural accelerators are coming into MCUs. The just released STM32N6 is probably among the best. Alif with the U55/U85 has been out for a little while. Maxim MAX78000 has a CNN accelerator out for a couple of years. More will come in the next few years - though not from Nvidia any time soon.

I'd love to hear more about your experience with Coral. Sounds like that'd be a good fit for a tiny GPU to run models with conv2d?

A few weeks ago they have reduced the price of the Orin Nano development kit from $500 to $250, while also increasing a few of the performance limits that cripple it in comparison with the more expensive Orin models.

Previously it was far too overpriced for most uses (except for someone developing a certified automotive device), but at the new price and performance it has become competitive with the existing alternatives in the same $150 to $300 price range, which are based on Intel, AMD, MediaTek, Qualcomm or Rockchip CPUs.

When they reduced the price of the dev kit, they priced it below the low volume sales price of the cheapest Orin Nano 4GB module. Presumably the module prices go down when you buy in bulk but for small volumes it was (is still?) cheaper to buy the dev kit and throw away the carrier than to just buy the module. Granted the dev kits went out of stock pretty quick.

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