Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ 2 adds 40 TOPS AI acceleration and 8GB RAM

The Raspberry Pi AI HAT+ 2 add-on has been released, bringing a major performance upgrade for Raspberry Pi 5 systems with up to 40 TOPS of AI acceleration.

The board uses a Hailo-10H chip and includes 8GB of onboard RAM, allowing it to run large language models (LLMs), vision-language models (VLMs) and other generative AI workloads locally, independent from the Raspberry Pi 5. It can also handle vision tasks such as object recognition and pose estimation at roughly the same 26 TOPS level as the earlier Hailo-8-powered AI HAT+. The AI HAT+ 2 connects via the Pi 5’s PCI Express interface, integrates with Raspberry Pi’s camera software stack, and is compatible with Pi 5 boards from 1GB to 16GB.

Naush Patuck, Senior Principal Engineer at Raspberry Pi, said the move from the original AI HAT+ (released in 2024) to the AI HAT+ 2 is "mostly seamless and transparent." Hailo’s GitHub repo provides resources for generative AI, and several LLMs—Llama3.2, DeepSeek-R1-Distill and Qwen2—are available at launch, with more promised after launch. The board ships with an optional heatsink and ZDNET noted the processor can get pretty hot under heavy loading. The AI HAT+ 2 is available immediately for $130, and ZDNET found stock at PiShop, which also sells a starter kit.

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Tech, Naush Patuck