Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ Toolkit
Community assistance about the Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit, OpenCV, and all aspects of computer vision-related on Intel® platforms.

NCSDK support NCS 2?

idata
Employee
3,872 Views

Hi,

 

We have been using the original NCS with NCSDK on our embedded ARM platform, which has been running well. Unfortunately, NCSDK does not support the brand new NCS 2, and OpenVINO does not run on ARM. Question is, what is Intel's road map? Will Intel add NCS 2 support in NCSDK? Will OpenVINO be ported to ARM platform? It would be really helpful if Intel could give us a direction and time frames so we can start developing our solutions based on NCS 2.

0 Kudos
25 Replies
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

This is a great question and I was wondering the same thing. I was targeting a raspberry pi for an embedded platform and I would love to use the Myriad X. The last time I tried OpenVino it worked just fine on my laptop, but the NCSDK stopped working - I would hate to have to start over on my development platform if the X will be supported in a future NCSDK release.

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

I'm wondering _exactly_ the same thing. I bought the NCS2 and received it _today_. I immediately tried it with the latest NCSDK only to find out it wasn't supported (after reading the announcement from yesterday). @Tome_at_Intel: Can you perhaps shed some light on either of these two paths? I'm happy to keep using the NCSDK way as it has proven a very straightforward and effective way to get things up and running.

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

Same here. I need to make a decent sized purchase of Movidius sticks very soon but without NCSDK support the second generation is useless to my project.

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

Intel's handling of this hardware and SDK is pretty embarrassing. I can't honestly believe they would sell a product with such lack of information

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

@smineyes @lbcastro @kajoh @stephenwberry @jasaw Hey guys I understand the confusion and I'd like to clear a few things up.

 

OpenVINO is compatible with both the NCS1 AND NCS2 while the NCSDK is only compatible with the NCS1. OpenVINO will be at the forefront of IntelAI solutions and works with many Intel hardware including Intel CPUs, GPUs, FPGA and the Intel Neural Compute Stick.

 

Some of the workflow in OpenVINO is still the same as NCSDK:

 

     

  1. Compile your model into a binary Intermediate Represenation (IR) format using FP16 data type (using the Model Optimizer instead of the mvNCCompile tool)
  2.  

  3. Once you have your binary IR file, you can use it in your Python or C++ application using the Inference Engine API which is equivalent to the NCSDK MVNC API.
  4.  

 

More information can be found at https://ncsforum.movidius.com/discussion/1302/intel-neural-compute-stick-2-information#latest and questions on OpenVINO and NCS2 can be posted on the OpenVINO forums which is located at: https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/computer-vision.

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

@Tome_at_Intel is the Github NCSDK going to be maintained going forward? Already nobody is monitoring the pull requests. :<

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

@Tome_at_Intel Thank you for responding. I still have a couple of questions, hoping you can help clarify:

 

     

  1. Has NCSDK been deprecated and will not be maintained going forward?
  2.  

  3. When can we expect OpenVINO to support ARM platform? I'm just looking for a rough estimate so we can map this into our project plan.
  4.  

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

@Tome_at_Intel

 

Let's keep this super clear as your last answer really does not answer the question at all. Will you be able to use the NCS2 on ARM processors or not?

 

Will OpenVINO be supported on ARM processors?

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

@jasaw @jmalcolm @smineyes

 

On this post it reads:

 

_The Intel® Distribution of the OpenVINO toolkit does not currently support Raspberry Pi but the team understands that RPi support is in high demand and this feature request has been prioritized accordingly._

 

Also, even though it is not clearly stated, it seems NCSDK is being deprecated in favor of OpenVINO.

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

Having tried with NCS 1's tutorials with 3 different computers and an RPI for the last 24 hours, and finally opened this thread.

 

SDK is not compatible with NSC 2

 

Time for rest now
0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

In the link I provided above and as others have mentioned, there is currently no Raspberry Pi support for OpenVINO and there isn't a release date for the OpenVINO Raspberry Pi feature that I can share at the moment.

 

We do realize that OpenVINO RPi support is a feature that is very important to our users and appreciate your patience and understanding.

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

@Tome_at_Intel One last question: Is NCSDK deprecated or can we expect to see at least NCS 2 support added while Intel ponders over OpenVINO Raspberry Pi?

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

@Tome_at_Intel where is the open source code ? we want to use NCS2 on our own device

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

Can we subscribe to a link to get updates on Pi support status for NCS2?

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

I just bought the NCS2 to do CV on RPi3 which sits on a robot and now i read this. Yes I didn't do my homework well enough but it's still a great disappointment to discover that NCSDK2 doesn't work with NCS2.

 

Sorry i but i don't see any better application for this stick other than some mobile device. And mobile means you need some ARM board, not a big (even mini form factor) PC. So please add ARM support !
0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

So are there any updates here? Are there say workarounds to pipe data from the RPi to the NCS2?

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

Do you want to swap your NCS2 for a NCS stick? I have 2 NCS sticks and looking to go entirely to NCS 2

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

disappointment to discover that NCSDK2 doesn't work with NCS2.

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,774 Views

But the NCS2 does work with OpenVino where everything is moving to.

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
2,472 Views

The NCSDK2 came before the NCS2 and addressed handling of multiple sticks I think? I am not totally sure.

 

I just changed and used the latest. It was not a huge move
0 Kudos
Reply