Movidius announced that it has entered a partnership with Lenovo that will grant the tech company access to Movidius’ Myriad 2 vision processing units (VPUs) and computer vision algorithms for use in “various virtual reality projects.” Although it seems likely that this announcement is about Lenovo’s promised Project Tango smartphone, It also could be used as a Hololens competitor.
The Movidius Myriad 2 is a third kind of processor that is designed to be used alongside the CPU and GPU. The VPU takes on vision processing tasks such as gesture tracking and environment mapping (among other things) to lower the CPU and GPU processing overhead.
Movidius engineered the VPU specifically for mobile and head-worn devices. The Myriad 2 VPU chip includes 12 programmable vector cores, a built-in image processor (ISP) and a cluster of hardware accelerators. The total package size is 5 x 5 x 0.35 mm, and Movidius said the part draws only a single watt of power.
Lenovo has been dabbling in VR for some time. at last year’s Lenovo Tech World there was a mysterious HMD (with no additional information) at the event.
While Lenovo is known as a PC maker, it actually has an extensive mobile portfolio. In addition to the smartphones it makes for overseas markets, it owns Motorola. Hololens and Meta 2 are both powerful and impressive devices that are self-contained and fundamentally mobile devices, and Lenovo knows how to make mobile devices. With the Myriad 2, it can add all the tracking that an AR/VR mobile device needs, too.
We are Sure that Lenovo’s Tech World tomorrow will give us more details about this other things from Lenovo!
