Collaboration between Sony and Raspberry Pi to reinforce Edge AI- Sony’s Investment.

On April 12, Sony Semiconductor Solutions (Sony SS) announced an investment in British Raspberry Pi Ltd. Although the investment amount has not been disclosed, it is said to be a “minority investment” (Sony SS PR).

Raspberry Pi is a small single board computer. Due to its low price and good availability, it is used in a wide range of fields such as education and industry, and has a broad developer community.

Raspberry Pi 4 Model B

In conjunction with this investment, the two companies will engage in strategic collaboration. The purpose is to enhance the compatibility between Sony SS’s edge AI solution “AITRIOS” and Raspberry Pi.

AITRIOS is an edge AI solution that takes advantage of the features of the “intelligent vision sensor” developed by Sony SS. The “IMX500” released in 2020 is equipped with a DSP and memory in the image sensor, and is characterized by image processing within the image sensor. It directly outputs not only the image but also the metadata of the recognition result.

Structure of the IMX500.The feature is that the pixel chip for the image sensor and the logic for processing are directly connected.

In general image recognition, the image of the image sensor is input to the computer in the latter stage, and AI is operated there to perform image recognition. In this case, since the image must be transferred first, the amount of data transferred within the device increases and the processing time increases. In addition, there is a high possibility that the image itself will be personal information, which requires time and effort for management.

On the other hand, in the case of AITRIOS, for example, if an image with a dog is recognized, the sensor can only output the metadata “dog”. There is no need to record images. This dramatically reduces the amount of data that flows through devices and networks, easing data management issues.

In the case of AITRIOS using IMX500, it is also possible to extract only “recognition results” from the sensor

However, due to its nature, it is also necessary to develop AI models to be used within AITRIOS and process metadata obtained from AITRIOS.

For some time, Sony has partnered with Microsoft on AITRIOS to promote the development of edge AI. We also provide a service called “Enterprise Edition” for the real environment of enterprise installation.

Sony SS explains that the aim of this partnership with Raspberry Pi is to “enhance the efforts of a wider range of developers.”

Sony SS has already provided a service called “Developer Edition” for AITRIOS for small-scale and casual development, but Sony SS wants to “use it more casually”. It’s not yet clear how the edge AI-powered sensors should be used.

We’ve been working on cultivating a developer community, but that kind of activity always takes time. Sony SS believes that by collaborating with Raspberry Pi, which has a large developer community around the world, it will be possible to accelerate the penetration of the community and the development of developers.

There are some edge AI dev kits, but many are still expensive. The IMX500 was originally a cheap sensor. If you can spread the use of Raspberry Pi in combination with it, you will be able to start developing edge AI for 2 to 300 dollars.

When the Sony SS side approached the Raspberry Pi side, they immediately agreed with the Raspberry Pi side, leading to this partnership.

The collaboration between the two companies is not limited to the IMX500 used in the current AITRIOS, but will continue with “new IMX products” that will appear in the future. The purpose of this investment in Raspberry Pi is to build such a strong relationship.

The following is a quote from the top management of both companies, which was published in the news release.