AMD Robotics Starter Kit Kick-Starts the Intelligent Factory of the Future

[btarunr]

Today AMD announced the Kria KR260 Robotics Starter Kit, the latest addition to the Kria portfolio of adaptive system-on-modules (SOMs) and developer kits. A scalable and out-of-the-box development platform for robotics, the Kria KR260 offers a seamless path to production deployment with the existing Kria K26 adaptive SOMs. With native ROS 2 support, the standard framework for robotics application development, and pre-built interfaces for robotics and industrial solutions, the new SOM starter kit enables rapid development of hardware-accelerated applications for robotics, machine vision and industrial communication and control.

"The Kria KR260 Robotics Starter Kits builds on the success of our Kria SOMs and KV260 Vision AI Starter Kit for AI and embedded developers, providing roboticists with a complete, out-of-the-box solution for this rapidly growing application space," said Chetan Khona, senior director of Industrial, Vision, Healthcare and Sciences Markets at AMD. "Roboticists will now be able to work in their standard development environment on a platform that has all the interfaces and capabilities needed to be up and running in less than an hour. The KR260 Starter Kit is an ideal platform to accelerate robotics innovation and easily take ideas to production at scale."



With industry analyst firm Omdia forecasting the robotics components market to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.4 percent between 2019 and 2025, with the overall world markets revenue to increase to approximately $126 billion by 2025, the Kria KR260 end-to-end adaptive robotics platform is expected to deliver nearly a 5X productivity gain over competitive, NVIDIA GPU-based solutions. Additionally, by accelerating the design cycle compared to chip-down design, the Kria SOM portfolio typically offers up to a nine-month savings in time-to-deployment, meaning getting started becomes quick and easy for all kinds of developers with no FPGA expertise required.

Complete Industrial Solution
The KR260 hardware platform provides pre-built interfaces for robotics and industrial solutions that, combined with a growing list of accelerated applications delivered via the AMD-Xilinx App Store, enable easy evaluation and a seamless path to deployment.

Central to the KR260 design experience and making the benefits of adaptive computing more accessible to the robotics community is the Kria Robotics Stack (KRS), an integrated set of robot libraries and utilities that use hardware to accelerate the development, maintenance and commercialization of industrial-grade robotic solutions targeting Kria SOMs. The low-latency, adaptive computing architecture of Kria SOMs implemented with KRS and ROS 2 can deliver over 8X better performance/watt and up to 3.5X lower latency compared to competitive GPU-based solutions.

The KR260 also includes support for the widely-adopted Ubuntu embedded operating system, providing compatibility with the latest long-term support (LTS) versions of Ubuntu Linux Desktop (22.04) from Canonical and ROS 2 Humble Hawksbill.

AMD is collaborating with Open Robotics, the creators of ROS 2 and other open software and hardware platforms for robotics, to validate and ensure compliance of our ROS 2 implementation for the robotics community.

"The Kria SOM family and KR260 Starter Kit provide the robotics community with a great combination of performance, flexibility and rapid development time," said Brian Gerkey, CEO of Open Robotics. "Users can create software-defined hardware and build solutions offering high performance per watt, with security, energy-efficiency and adaptability. Open Robotics is excited to be collaborating with AMD-Xilinx to understand and address the needs of roboticists using hardware acceleration to build new robot applications with the KR260 development platform."

Pricing and Availability
The Kria KR260 Robotics Starter Kit is priced at $349 and is immediately available from AMD and its network of worldwide distributors. The KR260 starter kit adds to the available Kria KV260 Vision AI Starter Kit, providing an easy-to-use development platform for designing vision applications.

For more information, visit the product page.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[mechtech]

Does North America still have factories?!?
*sad sarcasm*

 

[jeremyshaw]

Quad core A53 with two R5f cores. Mali 400 MP2. 4GB RAM, 16GB eMMC. FPGA part has 256K cells, 1248 DSPs, 26.6Mb memory (I'm assuming configurable SRAM portions of the cells/slices/etc). Outside of the featured roles, I don't know if you need a license to use Vivado for the Ultrascale MPSoC (as a normal FPGA+CPU). Would be a somewhat interesting replacement for the Zync 7020 in the TUL PYNQ Z2, albeit at higher prices.

AMD Technical Information Portal

docs.xilinx.com

Seems to mostly pit this competitively against the Jetson Nano and the Jetson TX2/i.

 

[R-T-B]

Does North America still have factories?!?
*sad sarcasm*

Of course, how else do you think we built Zuckerburg?

 

[Wirko]

Does North America still have factories?!?
*sad sarcasm*

Why shouldn't Mexico have a couple robots, too?

 

[MachineLearning]

Of course, how else do you think we built Zuckerburg?

I always assumed it was an extraterrestrial import.

 

[Space Lynx]

Does North America still have factories?!?
*sad sarcasm*

Actually there are a lot of factories in various Republican states still, and most of their wages have doubled in last five years. I have seen this first hand. I regret going to college, I make much less than they do now, lol

 

[Zareek]

Does North America still have factories?!?
*sad sarcasm*

I live in a more rural area of the Northeastern US. We have several factories in my little town of 7,000 people and no one wants to work in them, including the people who do work in them! I think one person I know who works in one doesn't absolutely hate it, and she is a low level manager now.

I personally used to work as part of the engineering team for a factory doing automation. Basically troubleshooting PLCs, sensors and computers for running factory equipment and collaborating with engineers to implement new technologies to improve accuracy and productivity. Working in a factory sucks!

Oh, and I had a similar issue to one of the guys who posted previously. I was doing highly technical work, and I was being paid less than some completely uneducated workers in production. They could easily out earn me with their near unlimited overtime. I was salary and working as many hours as most of them, but got nothing for my extra effort.

 

[mechtech]

I live in a more rural area of the Northeastern US. We have several factories in my little town of 7,000 people and no one wants to work in them, including the people who do work in them! I think one person I know who works in one doesn't absolutely hate it, and she is a low level manager now.

I personally used to work as part of the engineering team for a factory doing automation. Basically troubleshooting PLCs, sensors and computers for running factory equipment and collaborating with engineers to implement new technologies to improve accuracy and productivity. Working in a factory sucks!

Oh, and I had a similar issue to one of the guys who posted previously. I was doing highly technical work, and I was being paid less than some completely uneducated workers in production. They could easily out earn me with their near unlimited overtime. I was salary and working as many hours as most of them, but got nothing for my extra effort.

Interesting. Yes as an engineer I have had the dubious honour of being on 'salary' also. I think anyone working should be hourly, but that's just my opinion.

We used to have a large metallurgical site here, (closed now except for the crusher/concentrator), it was like a giant and very dirty factory. A lot of people didn't like working there due to the dirtiness, however they said they wouldn't quit cause they would not get the pension, wages, benefits, bonus, and vacation they got there anywhere else. (except if they moved provinces/countries to work in oil & gas or other mining outfits) A lot of factory work can be boring and tedious, but it typically pays more wages, pensions, benefits, etc. than working in a grocery store or almost anywhere else. (for trades, labourers, engineers, etc. of course)

 

[Space Lynx]

Interesting. Yes as an engineer I have had the dubious honour of being on 'salary' also. I think anyone working should be hourly, but that's just my opinion.

We used to have a large metallurgical site here, (closed now except for the crusher/concentrator), it was like a giant and very dirty factory. A lot of people didn't like working there due to the dirtiness, however they said they wouldn't quit cause they would not get the pension, wages, benefits, bonus, and vacation they got there anywhere else. (except if they moved provinces/countries to work in oil & gas or other mining outfits) A lot of factory work can be boring and tedious, but it typically pays more wages, pensions, benefits, etc. than working in a grocery store or almost anywhere else. (for trades, labourers, engineers, etc. of course)

we need more people to major in robotics, so we can live in a utopia with robots doing all the work.

on a more serious note though... it would be interesting to fast forward time by like 400 years, and see where humanity will be... lot is going to change between now and then I expect.

 

[Fourstaff]

I wonder what kind of robots will use these chips. Seems too powerful to be used on a robot arm, not quite there yet for fully mobile ones.

 

[timta2]

Actually there are a lot of factories in various Republican states still, and most of their wages have doubled in last five years. I have seen this first hand. I regret going to college, I make much less than they do now, lol

Because their wages were already low, since they are working in "work for less" states with no union representation.

 

[Space Lynx]

Because their wages were already low, since they are working in "work for less" states with no union representation.

cost of living was also low though. our house costs around $450 a month, and is 5x as a big most houses in California that prob cost 3k a month. for people locked into those good 30 year mortgages, who were making 8 an hr, they are still locked into those mortgages but now making 20 an hr - life is good now since their rent is still 450 a month, doing way better than most people in the country. its weird I admit, but lot of people are doing better than ever in the midwest if they are in a situation like this, I know many.

and once the mortgage is paid off, all bank. most people don't realize how important owning your own home and land is though, and frankly its a little too late to buy a mortgage now with the insane prices.

 

[Zareek]

cost of living was also low though. our house costs around $450 a month, and is 5x as a big most houses in California that prob cost 3k a month. for people locked into those good 30 year mortgages, who were making 8 an hr, they are still locked into those mortgages but now making 20 an hr - life is good now since their rent is still 450 a month, doing way better than most people in the country. its weird I admit, but lot of people are doing better than ever in the midwest if they are in a situation like this, I know many.

and once the mortgage is paid off, all bank. most people don't realize how important owning your own home and land is though, and frankly its a little too late to buy a mortgage now with the insane prices.

Sounds very different compared to where I lived just a few years back, in the southeast. A lot of the working poor there made federal minimum wage($7.25) in the local factories. I only lived there for about nine months before returning to the northeast. The lower cost of living didn't make up for the lower wages there. It wasn't even close, and I worked in IT at a hospital. I can't imagine what the people drudging through in the sweat shops felt like.

 

[Space Lynx]

Sounds very different compared to where I lived just a few years back, in the southeast. A lot of the working poor there made federal minimum wage($7.25) in the local factories. I only lived there for about nine months before returning to the northeast. The lower cost of living didn't make up for the lower wages there. It wasn't even close, and I worked in IT at a hospital. I can't imagine what the people drudging through in the sweat shops felt like.

that's fair, America is a big place. its best we don't generalize imo and I am at fault of that too