A stick PC or PC on a stick is a single-board computer in a small elongated casing resembling a stick, that can usually be plugged directly (without an HDMI cable) into an HDMI video port. A stick PC is a device which has independent CPUs or processing chips and which does not rely on another computer. It should not be confused with passive storage devices such as thumb drives.
A stick PC can be connected to a peripheral device such as a monitor, TV, or kiosk display to produce visual or audio output. Stick PCs generally have limited computing power and are not suited for intensive tasks, but can be suitable in other applications that do not require such power.
As the popularity of smart TVs and set-top boxes to view streaming services (such as the Roku) grew, companies started looking at making these small computers even smaller and easier to use.
2013-2014 saw several manufacturers come out with stick PCs. MeeGoPad released the first x86 based stick PC, featuring the Intel Atom Z3735F Processor.[5] In April 2013, Tronsmart released the MK908, using the Rockchip RK3188 (featuring the quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 and ARM Mali-400MP GPU). On July 24, 2013, Google introduced the Google Chromecast, a streaming device similar in function and design to a stick PC.[6][7] On November 19, 2014, Amazon released a smaller version of the Amazon Fire TV called the Fire TV Stick.
In July 2017, Intel released the Movidius Neural Compute Stick which included a Vision Processing Unit for vision-specific AI workload.[11] In January 2018, the Laceli AI Compute Stick came out, including a neural network processor unit for AI workload called Lightspeeur 2801S Neural Processor, and claiming to be more powerful and more energy-efficient than the Movidius.[12] In November 2018, the Orange Pi AI Stick 2801 came out, also featuring the Lightspeeur 2801S Neural Processor.[13]