Intel has announced that it has acquired low-power processor provider Movidius. The new acquisition is aimed to let the chip maker expand its existing RealSense technology and accelerate computer vision applications.
The financial terms of the deal were undisclosed. However, San Mateo-based Movidius will now work with Intel to integrate its vision processing unit (VPU) with RealSense.
“We see massive potential for Movidius to accelerate our initiatives in new and emerging technologies,” said Josh Walden, senior vice president and general manager, Intel’s New Technology Group, in a statement.
Movidius has a large number of computer vision SoCs that complements Intel’s RealSense 3D imaging developments. This is perhaps the ultimate reason for the acquisition.
“Computer vision will trigger a Cambrian explosion of compute, with Intel at the forefront of this new wave of computing, enabled by RealSense in conjunction with Movidius and our full suite of perceptual computing technologies,” Walden added.
Computer vision race
Intel and Movidius are likely to build a hardware platform that would enable future computing devices to have the vision to view 3D images and react in response to the nearby objects. The hardware would get support from software developments like what Facebook developed recently to identify and classify different objects using artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms.
Tech giants like Microsoft and Google are also on the same avenue. All these companies would soon leverage some Intel-Movidius offerings to give vision to future computers.
