An AI module for the Pi 5
Turbocharge Your Raspberry Pi

© Lead Image © Liubomyr Feshchyn, 123RF.com
What happens when the Raspberry Pi's makers and AI specialist Hailo collaborate on a project? We get an official AI kit HAT+ for the Pi 5 that adds an AI accelerator chip.
The Raspberry Pi AI Kit [1] consists of two components: a generic M.2 HAT+, an adaptor board that lets you connect any two M.2 modules (e.g., for NVMe storage) to the Raspberry Pi 5 and therefore directly to the PCI bus, and a Hailo-8L AI accelerator, which could also be installed on any other computer with an M.2 interface. This entry-level AI chip achieves a performance of 13 TOPS, which is half the number of tera-operations per second that you'd get with the standard Hailo-8 model.
As a first step, you need to assemble the system. Fit the four spacers, a GPIO extension connector, and a PCIe extension cable on the Raspberry Pi. Then slot the M.2 HAT+ onto the spacers and plug the ribbon cable into the connector on the HAT. Figure 1 shows the fully assembled, working system.
After restarting the Raspberry Pi, the Hailo board appears in the lspci
output as shown in Listing 1. The second line reveals that the installation of the AI accelerator was successful.
[...]
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