Edge computing specialist Adlink has announced a new product it hopes to create artificial intelligence development more accessible. The Pocket AI (opens in a new tab)presented at the Nvidia GTC 2023 conference, is a pocket-sized, portable GPU (or eGPU), which features an Nvidia RTX A500 professional graphics card (most likely in MXM form factor) with 4GB of GDDR6 memory and connects to the host computer via a Thunderbolt 3 port. This is roughly equivalent to a Geforce RTX 3050 graphics card for a laptop.
The company says its primary use case is the development of AI “from students and beginners who are still learning and reviewing knowledge, to seasoned programmers who cultivate and demonstrate new concepts,” but professional graphics users will find Pocket AI very useful for many applications : 2D/3D content, CAD (e.g. AutoCAD 2024), 3D rendering, AI image processing, etc.
Measuring 106 x 72 x 25mm and weighing 250 grams, it easily fits in your pocket and will be a great companion for laptops that don’t have a GPU to match a traditional mobile workstation. choose slimmed ChatGPT clone.
An intriguing concept
External GPUs are nothing new – they are has been around for years – but were usually limited to players (z some exceptions) and were always powered independently (pocket AI depends on the host device). They also accept full-sized graphics cards, which can be problematic; Adlink – given its credentials as an embedded systems expert – could potentially go beyond the A500, depending on Pocket AI’s success.
Other existing MXM Ampere modules include the A4500, A2000, A1000 and Adlink also sells an Intel Arc based MXM module with 4GB DDR6. Note that Pocket AI is not compatible with Apple Mac; The A500 has a TGP of 25W, 2048 CUDA cores, 64 Tensor cores and 16 Nvidia RT codes, achieving 100 TOPS DENSE INT8 in inference and a peak performance of 6.54 TFLOPS FP32.
Desktop computers that have a free Thunderbolt 3 port but no physical graphics card option (e.g. Mini PC, all-in-one) can also be turned into workstations.
Adlink says Pocket AI will be available for pre-order from April 2023, with shipping expected to start in June 2023. We’ve reached out to them to find out more about the price, if there will be a more powerful version, and if a TB4 version is in the works.