ASUS and Google have joined forces to develop a new project that the companies are calling ‘Tinker Board’ single board computers (SBCs). With a footprint not much larger than a credit card, the systems are designed for building small systems to work on AI inference applications like image recognition.

The systems in question are the Tinker Edge T and Tinker Edge R. The former is based on the NXP i.MX8M with an Edge TPU chip that accelerates TensorFlow Lite, whereas the Tinker Edge R is powered by the Rockchip RK3399 Pro processor with an NPU for 4K machine learning. The SBCs officially support Android and Debian operating system, though nothing prevents them from running Linux or other OSes.

Both Tinker Edge T and Tinker Edge R computers feature active cooling as well as mainstream I/O interfaces, including GbE, USB 3.0, and HDMI.

ASUS and Google position their Tinker Edge T and Tinker Edge R for various edge AI applications that have to be compact and very energy efficient.

ASUS plans to demonstrate its Tinker Edge T and Tinker Edge R SBCs at the IoT Technology 2019 conference in Japan, which kicks off on November 20. Pricing of the devices remains to be seen, but it will depend on volumes and other factors.

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Source: ASUS (via PC Watch)

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  • yetanotherhuman - Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - link

    Aren't credit-cards supposed to be 0.76mm thick? These don't look less than a millimetre thick.
  • ZolaIII - Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - link

    The I iMX one might just have some future thanks to Linux support, needles to say they are both huge miss regarding AI.
  • boozed - Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - link

    Yep, that'll fit in my wallet, no wucking forries
  • eastcoast_pete - Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - link

    Minor edit: Debian is a Linux flavor/implementation. (In contrast, Android is derived from Linux, but you can't just run Linux programs on it).
  • bananaforscale - Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - link

    "The SBCs officially support Android and Debian operating system, though nothing prevents them from running Linux or other OSes."

    I'll point out that Debian is Linux.
  • rbarak - Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - link

    Where would one put memory on these systems?
  • nandnandnand - Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - link

    You need to jam the memory stick into the USB port.
  • Beneetley - Tuesday, January 19, 2021 - link

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