LONDON, UK, 12 February, 2019 – RS Components (RS), the trading brand of Electrocomponents plc (LSE: ECM), a global multi-channel provider of industrial and electronic products and solutions, today announced it is shipping the recently launched Intel® Neural Compute Stick 2 (Intel® NCS 2) (https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/processor-microcontroller-development-kits/1811851)  – a highly affordable small and fanless computer-vision and deep-neural-network (DNN) accelerator.

As well as for use by data scientists and academics, the device is ideal for a wide selection of developers and engineers looking at integrating computer-vision and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into their Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Available in the convenient USB form factor, the stick delivers high versatility for users, enabling deep-learning prototyping on a laptop or device with a USB interface.

Like its predecessor product – the Intel® Movidius™ Neural Compute Stick, which was launched in 2017 – the Intel NCS 2 is based on the Intel® Movidius™ Vision Processing Unit (VPU). However, it deploys the latest version: the Intel® Movidius™ Myriad™ X VPU (https://newsroom.intel.com/press-kits/movidius-myriad-x-vpu/), which has a dedicated hardware accelerator for DNN inference.

The Intel NCS 2 also becomes a highly versatile prototyping and development tool when combined with the Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit (https://software.intel.com/en-us/openvino-toolkit), which offers support for deep learning, computer vision and hardware acceleration to enable applications that have human-like vision capabilities. The combination of the Intel NCS 2 and the Intel Distribution of OpenVINO toolkit enables a fast development-to-deployment cycle: from prototyping trained DNNs on the compute stick to the easy porting of DNNs to an Intel Movidius VPU-based embedded device or system with minimal code changes required, if any. The Intel NCS 2 also provides support for the popular open-source Caffe and TensorFlow DNN software libraries.

The Intel Neural Compute Stick 2 is shipping now from RS in the EMEA and Asia Pacific regions.

About RS Components
RS Components, Allied Electronics & Automation and IESA are the trading brands of Electrocomponents plc, a global multi-channel provider of industrial and electronic products and solutions. We offer more than 500,000 industrial and electronics products, sourced from over 2,500 leading suppliers, and provide a wide range of value-added services to over one million customers. With operations in 32 countries, we ship more than 50,000 parcels a day.

Electrocomponents is listed on the London Stock Exchange and in the last financial year ended 31 March 2018 had revenues of £1.71bn.

For more information, please visit the website at https://uk.rs-online.com/web/.