Intel unveils its new Movidius Myriad low-power VPU that will excel at computer vision tasks at the edge, code-named “Keem Bay”, expected to launch in H1 2020
Kyle Wiggers / VentureBeat :
Context & Ripple Effects
Keem Bay is the next step in a line Intel has been building since it bought Movidius: the Myriad X VPU arrived in 2017 as a low-power accelerator for vision devices, and before that Intel had already packaged the silicon into cheap developer hardware like the $79 USB stick and later the $100 Neural Compute Stick 2. Each release moved the same idea forward — dedicated vision inference on-device rather than in the cloud.
The competitive frame matters too: in April, Qualcomm unveiled its Cloud AI 100 for AI inference at the edge, claiming peak performance well above its own Snapdragon flagship. With Keem Bay slated for the first half of 2020, Intel is positioning its VPU franchise squarely against Qualcomm's entry in the same window.
First-order effects
- Edge-device developers building cameras, drones, and robotics get a new dedicated vision-inference option from Intel in H1 2020, continuing the Myriad roadmap rather than forcing them onto general-purpose CPUs or GPUs.
Second-order effects
- Qualcomm's edge-inference push now faces a direct Intel alternative at the low-power end of the market, pressuring both vendors on performance-per-watt claims and developer-tooling lock-in for design wins in embedded vision hardware.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — Intel iterating VPUs into ever-cheaper form factors while Qualcomm builds edge inference chips — AI inference structurally migrates off the datacenter and into endpoints, with silicon vendors competing to own the accelerator layer inside devices rather than selling cloud capacity.
The trend: Silicon vendors are racing to move AI inference out of the datacenter and into low-power endpoint chips, with Intel's Myriad line and Qualcomm's edge-inference silicon now competing head-to-head.