Microsoft HoloLens is creating their own AI chip

Computer vision

If you’ve ever seen James Cameron’s 1984 flick Terminator, you’re probably familiar with the red “terminator vision” that the T-800 sees when he is sizing up his surroundings or determining “fit probability” of someone’s clothes.

Well, Microsoft is working on something kinda like that.

The HoloLens

While being developed for less nefarious use, Microsoft announced that they will be adding an AI coprocessor to the latest version of their HoloLens 2 augmented reality glasses. The AI coprocessor is a new version of the original Holographic Processing Unit, one that will “natively and flexibly implement DNNs” (Deep Neural Networks).

The new chip is made of a custom silicon and is said to “analyze visual, auditory, and other sensor data locally on the device instead of relying on sending the information to a cloud-based server for review” meaning quicker performance and no time is wasted uploading data to the cloud.

Because the data never leaves the device, this also makes for a more secure option.

The HoloLens looks to be promising tech in the economic and medical fields. Students in med school could strap these things on their heads and see a sort of 3D representation of a brain or a heart for example and from there be able to see white matter of the brain or various pathways for a dissection that wouldn’t be apparent from referencing a book alone.

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In another scenario, imagine a HUD in the dashboard of your car that would give you readings on traffic estimates and safe and alternative routes that you could take. You could find all kinds of rad routes to get around town.

Thanks to the beefy processing power of the new AI chip, the possibilities are endless.

The future of Holo

With new technology there will always be bottlenecks abound that will make it a challenge to develop the kind of futuristic tech that we hope to see.

The original HoloLens was slated for sometime this year, but with the development of the new AI chip, the HoloLens team has started working on a third version with the new tech and hope to have it available by the end of 2018, or early 2019.

#HoloLens

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