Deploying Edge Microvisor Toolkit with Edge Manageability Framework to Evaluate Intel Processors for AI Workloads

[stevenhoenisch]

Your edge AI deployments likely come with a litany of challenges, and chief among them, at least in the early days of a mass deployment of edge devices, might be validating the trade-offs between the cost, performance, and security of the underlying processors. You'll need to strike a balance between cost-effective deployments and meeting your performance and edge-specific security requirements. Intel processors as well as several open source projects from Intel can help meet those objectives.

Edge Microvisor Toolkit is a reference Linux operating system that demonstrates the full capabilities of Intel processors for edge AI workloads through Linux patches from Intel that are yet to be upstreamed -- patches that optimize performance, security, and other capabilities for heterogeneous edge AI workloads. Edge Microvisor Toolkit has undergone extensive validation across the Intel Xeon®, Intel® Core Ultra™, Intel Core™, and Intel® Atom® processor families. The toolkit also provides robust support for integrated and Intel discrete GPU cards as well as an integrated NPU. There are pre-tuned drivers and acceleration libraries for Intel® CPUs and GPUs. Intel® Arc™ B580 graphics are discoverable for containerized applications and VMs with pass-through mode to deliver processing power to distributed edge applications.

And that brings us to Edge Manageability Framework. With the immutable standalone node of Edge Microvisor Toolkit, which integrates with Kubernetes and foundational extensions, you can easily evaluate edge AI applications by deploying the toolkit with Edge Manageability Framework. The framework's flexible deployment options minimize complexity and overhead without compromising performance or security.

On a related note about security, check out the Application Interconnect capability of Edge Manageability Framework or watch the recently posted YouTube video demonstration.

Getting Started

The standalone version of the toolkit couples with Edge Manageability Framework to help deliver early access to next-generation Intel platform capabilities. Edge Manageability Framework, for instance, automates the rollout of new OS profiles to compatible hardware platforms so that you can quickly deploy and evaluate the latest Intel optimizations.

For more information about using Edge Microvisor Toolkit, see the page on deployment with Edge Manageability Framework.

For instructions on how to deploy the standalone node of Edge Microvisor Toolkit with Edge Manageability Framework, see Get Started.

[biapalmeiro]

Thanks for kicking off this important topic! 👏

Curious to hear how others are handling onboarding at scale—especially in constrained environments.
➡️ Are there any best practices or patterns you've found effective for securely provisioning hundreds or thousands of edge devices in the field?

Would love to learn from real-world deployment stories or pain points.