Silicon Updates: Microsoft's Second gen HoloLens HPU comes with AI co-processor

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most rapidly emerging fields in the recent times. Deep learning has taken computer vision to he next level. Over few years in the past, research has been answering many of the most challenging aspects of AI. Though deep learning has achieved so much through Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), there are two major challenges face by the deep learning approaches - they require heavy samples of data for training and a kind of compute that not responsive to the general purpose architectures. Certain firms have designed their own architecture versions that are capable of computing the data for DNNs.

HoloLens comes with a Holographic Processing Unit (HPU), that processes the data collected from the sensors. The HoloLens has different kinds of sensors - head tracking sensors, Microsoft's custom time-of-flight depth sensor, infrared camera and the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). With all these sensors equipped on-board, Microsoft HoloLens stands as the fully self-contained holographic computer.
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Harry Shum is the executive vice president of Microsoft's AI R&D group. On 23rd July, Harry has announced that the next generation HoloLens is under development at the conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2017. He has also mentioned that this iteration of HoloLens will be equipped with AI co-processor for the HPU primary processor. Also, at the event, Harry has illustrated the prototype of the next gen HoloLens.
Read more: Microsoft Smart Grids.
The are many application specific implementations of the AI co-processor for HoloLens. One of them is to keep the HoloLens running, even though the HoloLens battery is off. A similar approach is being implemented in Microsoft's Mixed Reality (MR) applications.

The AI co-processor is designed to work in the next version of HoloLens, running continuously, off the HoloLens battery. This is just one example of the new capabilities we are developing for HoloLens, and this is the kind of thinking you need if you’re going to develop mixed reality devices that are themselves intelligent. Mixed reality and artificial intelligence represent the future of computing, and we’re excited to be advancing this frontier. - Harry Shum at CVPR 2017.

Read more: Microsoft's Fluent Design.