Documentation for ACAP Development on ARTPEC-9 Cameras

[WilfR]

Hi Axis folks,
We now have access to an ARTPEC-9 camera. We were able to get the ARTPEC-8 version of one of our ACAPs to run on the new hardware by changing the name of the larod Device from "axis-a8-dlpu-tflite" to "a9-dlpu-tflite" when we call larodGetDevice. This seems to work ok but I have a couple of questions :

1. Are there any differences that we should be aware of between the ARTPEC-8 "axis-a8-dlpu-tflite" DLPU and the ARTPEC-9 "a9-dlpu-tflite" DLPU, or is changing the name of the requested device all we have to do?

2. Our ARTPEC-9 camera also reports a "a9-gpu-proc" device. What is this GPU, and what is it used for? Is this a resource that we can use in ACAP development, and if so, is there any documentation available about the device?

Thanks very much!
Cheers,
Wilf.

[isak-jakobsson]

Hi!

Great to hear that you were able to get your ACAP to run on the ARTPEC-9.

1. You're correct about the fact that you have to change the larod device from "axis-a8-dlpu-tflite" to "a9-dlpu-tflite" in order to access the DLPU. This is essentially everything that you will have to do to get your ACAP working. However, the DLPUs have some differences. To learn more about those differences, go to the developer documentation, especially the pages Quantization for each DLPU, Deep Learning Processing Unit (DLPU) model conversion, Recommended model architecture and Optimization tips.
2. Yes, that device is available for ACAPs to use. However, certain cameras (PTZ iirc) require exclusive access to the GPU for 3D-masking, on these cameras a9-gpu-proc will not be available for use or be listed. If you want your ACAP to work for all A9 cameras you will need to be able to fall back to a different preprocessing backend.
   It works the same as our other preprocessing backends that use OpenCL. You can find the documentation about the backend in the larod api documentation about preprocessing under the OpenCL header.