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TPU usage on Linux (x86_64)

Getting a Coral TPU might be a bit challenging to setup. The challenge is mainly in getting the right version of the libedgetpu library to work with our TensorFlow version. The rest is a lot easier as it is just one argument to compile with edgetpu support enabled.

Getting libedgetpu to work!

Libedgetpu is version tied to the Tensorflow lite version which we are using! Which is TensorFlow Lite 2.16.1; Which is always a bit outdated as there are already way newer versions of Tensorflow around. Another annoyance is that the packages from the APT, RPM and AUR are either out-of-date or pulled from the package repository's. Meaning that to install the library we cannot make use of precompiled libraries and have to compile it ourselfs.

Compiling libedgetpu

Compiling libedgetpu is annoying, mainly do to the bazel buildsystem (which is Google's own build-system). Their buildscripts require a quite recent version of bazel, which can't be found in your APT and RPM repository's (in rolling distro's such as ARCH this is not a problem!). So to install these packages you run:

On Debian & Ubuntu*;

sudo apt-get remove bazel-bootstrap -y &&
sudo apt install apt-transport-https curl gnupg -y
curl -fsSL https://bazel.build/bazel-release.pub.gpg | gpg --dearmor >bazel-archive-keyring.gpg
sudo mv bazel-archive-keyring.gpg /usr/share/keyrings
echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/bazel-archive-keyring.gpg] https://storage.googleapis.com/bazel-apt stable jdk1.8" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bazel.list && sudo apt update && sudo apt -y install bazel make libusb-1.0-0.dev devscripts
On ubuntu install this package too, as it is not included by default and is needed to package up the .deb file:

sudo apt-get install dh-make

On Fedora; 

dnf copr enable vbatts/bazel
dnf install bazel make

On Suse; 

zypper install bazel make

Then clone the libedgetpu repository

git clone https://github.com/google-coral/libedgetpu.git

And compile:

cd libedgetpu && make

This should take around 5-10 minutes on a moderately fast computer (i5 10th gen).

Now after compilation you should add these libraries and include files to your linux filesystem.

On Debian & Ubuntu based distro's:

debuild -us -uc -tc -b -d && cd ..
After which you get two deb files; libedgetpu-std-... and libedgetpu-max-...

The std underclocks the edgetpu so that it does not get hot. The max runs the edgetpu at maximum speed.

Install the std version: 

sudo dpkg -i libedgetpu1-std*.deb libedgetpu-dev*.deb

For Fedora and other RPM-based distro's follow this guide