Highlights:

  • With the release of Tachyon, the company expands its hardware line into a new market. It’s a so-called single-board computer, built on a single circuit board to minimize power and space requirements.
  • Using Tachyon, Particle claims to make running artificial intelligence models at the edge easier.

Startup company Particle Industries Inc. launched Tachyon, a single-board computer developed to power connected devices.

Tachyon is considered as a substitute for the well-liked Raspberry Pi series of miniature computing modules. Since the 2012 launch of the Raspberry Pi product series, over 60 million units have been purchased by businesses and individuals. These modules power industrial robots, satellites, agricultural machinery, and several other systems.

Qualcomm Inc. and other investors have contributed over USD 80 million to the San Francisco-based startup Particle. It runs a cloud platform that businesses use to control fleets of linked devices. Developers can remotely adjust the configuration of connected devices, push software updates, and troubleshoot technical problems with the platform.

Additionally, Particle provides a selection of supplementary products. Businesses can use it to install an operating system on their networked devices, which serves as the software basis for on-device applications. Particle offers hardware modules to outfit a system with 5G and Wi-Fi connectivity to assist customers in connecting their gadgets to the internet.

With the release of Tachyon, the company expands its hardware line into a new market. It’s a single-board computer, developed on a single circuit board to diminish power and space demands. The Tachyon is around the size of a credit card, just like the competitor Raspberry Pi.

An eight-core central processor unit from Particle’s investor Qualcomm provides most of the device’s processing power. The fastest core on the chip can reach up to 2.7 gigahertz. There are two categories of slower cores with peaks of 2.4 and 1.9 gigahertz respectively.

The CPU supports four gigabytes of RAM and a solid-state drive with 64 gigabytes of capacity. The SSD is built on UFS flash, which uses less power than the NVMe form of flash that data center operators like and is commonly used in smartphones. Customers who need more capacity can connect an external flash drive opportunistically using an NVMe-compliant USB-C connector on the circuit board.

Using Tachyon, Particle claims to make running artificial intelligence models at the edge easier. The gadget might be used by a manufacturer, for instance, to fuel a computer vision-based production line monitoring system that looks for problems. To facilitate these use cases, Particle has given Tachyon a neural processing unit with a maximum throughput of 12 trillion calculations per second.

Moreover, there is a Qualcomm Adreno 643 GPU. Its purpose is to increase the Tachyon’s processing speed for multimedia data. The device can receive this kind of data and output it to external screens because of the included USB-C port, which facilitates the transfer of multimedia files using the DisplayPort protocol.

The USB-C port can also charge systems that run on Tachyon power. As an alternative, buyers can request that the computer have a built-in battery. Due to that setup choice, it can be utilized inside connected devices that don’t run right next to a power outlet.

The Tachyon’s integrated antennae complete its feature set. According to Particle, they enable systems that run on the module to connect to 5G and Wi-Fi networks. Building internet-connected systems requires less labor since the integrated wireless networking gear eliminates the need for developers to add external antennae. Tachyon can be purchased for as little as USD 149.