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by Luxonis-Brandon 2175 days ago
Thanks for the kind words. Brandon the founder here. :-)

So although I could see how that quote could appear like that, the quote is not kissing the ring. We scoured the whole semiconductor start up scene to find a chip that could be used for this.

There are only 2 chips (as I'm aware, as of this writing) that can be used in such a way: 1. Intel Movidius Myriad X 2. Inuitive NU4000AI.

And the Inuitive, until super recently (i.e. 1.5 years after we have already built hardware off the Myriad X) was not ready to be used (had tape-out issues at the fab).

So this made the Myriad X the only chip that (1) had the capabilities needed and (2) was actually available and in production.

In terms of our open-source nature, the latter is what we've implemented - where we have closed source binaries running on the Myriad X - which then have a slew of open-source counterparts on the host. Sorry if this came off disingenuous. Do you have advice on how to phrase it in a better way?

https://github.com/luxonis/depthai-hardware - DepthAI hardware designs themselves. https://github.com/luxonis/depthai - Python Interface and Examples https://github.com/luxonis/depthai-api - C++ Core and C++ API https://github.com/luxonis/depthai-ml-training - Online AI/ML training leveraging Google Colab (so it’s free) https://github.com/luxonis/depthai-experiments - Experiments showing how to use DepthAI.

The above includes open source hardware, core capabilities in C++ which can be cross-compiled for various hosts, and open-source training notebooks and use-case examples.

So the goal of open-sourcing all that we can (including hardware) is to enable folks who have their own applications to leverage this, modify it, use it, etc. w/out having to even talk to us. We cannot open-source the code that runs on the Myriad X however, as then we wouldn't have a way to monetize, and would have to give up on the mission. (That, and we're also not allowed to.)

Thoughts?

Thanks, Brandon