Azure Percept overview

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Important

Retirement of Azure Percept DK:

Update 22 February 2023: A firmware update for the Percept DK Vision and Audio accessory components (also known as Vision and Audio SOM) is now available here, and will enable the accessory components to continue functioning beyond the retirement date.

The Azure Percept public preview will be evolving to support new edge device platforms and developer experiences. As part of this evolution the Azure Percept DK and Audio Accessory and associated supporting Azure services for the Percept DK will be retired March 30th, 2023.

Effective March 30th, 2023, the Azure Percept DK and Audio Accessory will no longer be supported by any Azure services including Azure Percept Studio, OS updates, containers updates, view web stream, and Custom Vision integration. Microsoft will no longer provide customer success support and any associated supporting services. For more information, please visit the Retirement Notice Blog Post.

Azure Percept is a family of hardware, software, and services designed to accelerate business transformation using IoT and AI at the edge. Azure Percept covers the full stack from silicon to services to solve the integration challenges of edge AI at scale.

The integration challenges one faces when attempting to deploy edge AI solutions at scale can be summed up into three major points of friction:

  • Identifying and selecting the right silicon to power the solutions.
  • Ensuring the collective security of the hardware, software, models, and data.
  • The ability to build and manage solutions that seamlessly work at scale.

Components of Azure Percept

The main components of Azure Percept are:

  • Azure Percept DK.

    • A development kit that is flexible enough to support a wide variety of prototyping scenarios for device builders, solution builders, and customers.

  • Services and workflows that accelerate edge AI model and solution development.

    • Development workflows and pre-built models accessible from Azure Percept Studio.
    • Model development services.
    • Device management services for scaling.
    • End-to-end security.

  • AI hardware reference design and certification programs.

    • Provides the ecosystem of hardware developers with patterns and best practices for developing edge AI hardware that can be integrated easily with Azure AI and IoT services.

Next steps

Learn more about Azure Percept DK and Azure Percept Studio.