DPUs, IPUsNPUs, QPUs, TPUs, VPUs: What are they, and what are they good for in BOINC?

[Dirk Broer]

TPUs in the Wild, or: How to get hold of a TPU?

A. Buy a Google Coral Dev Board. You have the choice between a 1GB model and a 4GB model. You can also choose for the ASUS Tinker Edge T, that only has a 1GB version.

Both boards have a NXP i.MX 8M SOC (a quad-core Cortex-A53, with Cortex-M4F copro), with an Integrated GC7000 Lite Graphics GPU and a Google Edge TPU coprocessor of some 4 TOPS (int8) @2 TOPS per watt.
The Coral board runs Mendel Linux, the ASUS board runs Debian 9 (according to their webpage. Might be Linaro Debian); the Coral board needs a 5V DC USB Type-C power supply, the ASUS broad needs a 12~19v DC Power Input Jack (5.5/2.5mm)

B. Buy a Coral USB Accelerator. It has the same Google Edge TPU coprocessor of some 4 TOPS (int8) @2 TOPS per watt, and has a USB 3.0 Type-C connector for data and power.
It can be used on both Windows, MacOS x86-64 systems, as well as all platforms running Debian -including the before mentioned Coral Dev and Tinker Edge Boards.

C. Buy a Coral Mini PCIe Accelerator. It has that same Google Edge TPU coprocessor of some 4 TOPS (int8) @2 TOPS per watt, and has a Mini PCIe connector for data and power.
Integrates with any Debian-based Linux or Windows 10 system with a compatible card module slot.

D. Buy a Coral M.2 Accelerator with A+E-, or the one with B+M-key. Both have again that same Google Edge TPU coprocessor of some 4 TOPS (int8) @2 TOPS per watt, but now with either a M.2 A+E-, or a B+M-key connector for data and power. Integrates with any Debian-based Linux or Windows 10 system with a compatible card module slot.

E. Buy the Coral M.2 Accelerator with Dual Edge TPU. It has two Google Edge TPU coprocessors of some 4 TOPS (int8) @2 TOPS per watt each, but has a M.2 E-key connector for data and power.
Integrates with any Debian-based Linux or Windows 10 system with a compatible card module slot.
Mind you: Although the M.2 Specification (section 5.1.2) declares E-key sockets provide two instances of PCIe x1, most manufacturers provide only one. To use both Edge TPUs, be sure your socket connects both instances to the host!

If this technology does take off BOINC-wise, ASUS has this PCIe card that takes four or eight of these Dual Edge TPUs aboard, depending on the model !
See Linus from Linus Tech Tips trying to have fun with it
See Jeff Geerling struggling with it on a Seaberry

F. For those of us who experiment with Arduinos and/or Robots: there are also the Dev Board Mini, based on a MediaTek 8167s SoC (Quad-core Arm Cortex-A35), and the Dev Board Micro, based on a NXP i.MX RT1176 (Cortex-M7 and Cortex-M4)


BTW: Coral TPUs support the TensorFlow Lite API