OSS + ELC EU 2026

AI is inexorably puncturing into our daily lives in some way, shape or form. Up to now, cloud-based LLMs have been the most notable incarnations. And yet, our daily lives contain a slew of devices that remain, for now, of the "dumb" variant. As AI technology evolves, matures and gradually commoditizes, several underlying forces, which we'll examine, will increasingly push such functionality into edge devices. This will be especially true of Linux-grade devices that, on the surface, would seem to have the requisite capabilities to support AI-grade stacks.

This talk will examine the AI software stacks available to build edge AI devices based on Linux-grade systems, especially the seemingly infinite functionality permutations made possible by generative AI. While there have been several “open weights” models with licensing constraints, the recent introduction of the Gemma 4 family (under ASL), which includes models specifically targeted at IoT, is a game changer and likely a taste of things to come. We’ll survey available models and engines, such as llama.cpp and ollama, and how to build real systems with them while accounting for in-the-field challenges.

2nd of two companion talks.