Create a Yocto Image with Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit

This document provides instructions for creating a Yocto image with Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit.

Follow the Yocto Project official documentation to set up and configure your host machine to be compatible with BitBake.

Step 1: Set Up Environment

  1. Clone the repositories.

    git clone https://git.yoctoproject.org/git/poky
git clone https://git.yoctoproject.org/meta-intel
git clone https://git.openembedded.org/meta-openembedded
git clone https://github.com/kraj/meta-clang.git

  2. Set up the OpenEmbedded build environment.

    source poky/oe-init-build-env

  3. Add BitBake layers.

    bitbake-layers add-layer ../meta-intel
bitbake-layers add-layer ../meta-openembedded/meta-oe
bitbake-layers add-layer ../meta-openembedded/meta-python
bitbake-layers add-layer ../meta-clang

  4. Verify if layers were added (optional step).

    bitbake-layers show-layers

  5. Set up BitBake configurations. Include extra configuration in the conf/local.conf file in your build directory as required.

    # Build with SSE4.2, AVX2 etc. extensions
MACHINE = "intel-skylake-64"

# Enable clDNN GPU plugin when needed.
# This requires meta-clang and meta-oe layers to be included in bblayers.conf
# and is not enabled by default.
PACKAGECONFIG:append:pn-openvino-inference-engine = " opencl"

# Enable building OpenVINO Python API.
# This requires meta-python layer to be included in bblayers.conf.
PACKAGECONFIG:append:pn-openvino-inference-engine = " python3"

# This adds OpenVINO related libraries in the target image.
CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL:append = " openvino-inference-engine"

# This adds OpenVINO samples in the target image.
CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL:append = " openvino-inference-engine-samples"

# Include OpenVINO Python API package in the target image.
CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL:append = " openvino-inference-engine-python3"

# Include model conversion API in the target image.
CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL:append = " openvino-model-optimizer"

Step 2: Build a Yocto Image with OpenVINO Packages

Run BitBake to build your image with OpenVINO packages. For example, to build the minimal image, run the following command:

bitbake core-image-minimal

Note

For validation/testing/reviewing purposes, you may consider using the nohup command and ensure that your vpn/ssh connection remains uninterrupted.

Step 3: Verify the Yocto Image

Verify that OpenVINO packages were built successfully. Run the following command:

oe-pkgdata-util list-pkgs | grep openvino

If the image build is successful, it will return the list of packages as below:

openvino-inference-engine
openvino-inference-engine-dbg
openvino-inference-engine-dev
openvino-inference-engine-python3
openvino-inference-engine-samples
openvino-inference-engine-src
openvino-model-optimizer
openvino-model-optimizer-dbg
openvino-model-optimizer-dev

Additional Resources