Hailo AI HAT+ PCIE expansion board compatibility

General
1

Hi all,

Will the Hailo AI HAT+ work with a particulare PCIE expansion PCB? we’ve lookd at the 52PI range which state they are not compatible with the Hailo HAT - Has anyone had any sucess with using the Hailo HAT with a particular brand of PCIE expansion pcb for the RPI5?

Thanks

2

The Hailo AI HAT+ is not designed to share the PCIe interface with other devices because the Raspberry Pi has only a single PCIe lane, whereas the Hailo-8 can utilize up to four lanes. As a result, the PCIe connection is already a bottleneck when running complex pipelines involving multiple models or multiple camera inputs.

I tested a third-party Raspberry Pi HAT with two M.2 slots and a built-in PCIe switch. However, the performance was poor and the system lacked stability.

If you’re considering using a second PCIe device for storage, I recommend using a USB 3.0-connected SSD instead, and reserving the PCIe lane exclusively for the Hailo accelerator.

Do you have another use case in mind?

3

Hi KlausK,

Thanks for replying.

We were hoping to use two PCIe devices on the Raspberry Pi 5. One being the AI HAT and the other a 5G modem.

The plan was to use a PCIe expansion HAT to allow us to connect both devices to the Pi.

Is this possible - and If so, do we know which PCIe expansion HAT(a) are compatible?

Thanks for your time
Matt.

4

I recommend looking into HATs that have two M.2 slots. This way, you can use a Hailo-8 M.2 module directly, rather than trying to adapt the AI HAT+.

Unfortunately, I can’t recommend a specific model, as I’ve only tested one that didn’t perform well.
For best possible performance, the HAT should use a PCIe Gen 3 switch.

Alternatively, I would recommend checking if the 5G modem can be connected via USB.