Drone manufacturer DJI today unveiled the Manifold, an embedded computer for drones that offers more powerful hardware and runs on Ubuntu Linux.

"Designed for developers, the Manifold's built-in Ubuntu operating system supports CUDA, OpenCV, and ROS," DJI said. "It is ideal for research and development of professional applications. The Manifold can natively run the DJI Onboard SDK, access flight data, and perform intelligent control and data analysis."

The Manifold, which also supports DirectX and OpenGL, costs $499 and is compatible with the $3,299 Matrice 100 drone.

DJI promised "advanced image processing in the sky," saying that Manifold uses the Nvidia Tegra K1 quad-core ARM Cortex-A15 processor with 192 GPU cores. With clock speeds up to 2.2GHz, the GPU cores can achieve throughput of 326 gigaflops, DJI said.

Manifold "can be deployed for use in artificial intelligence applications such as computer vision and deep learning," according to DJI. "This means your aerial platforms will not only be able to sense the surrounding environment, but also identify objects and respond in an instant."

Manifold ports include USB, Ethernet, Mini-PCIe, HDMI, UART, SPI, and I2C. Power consumption peaks at 15 watts, but it can be lower depending on the task. The Tegra's "4-plus-1" architecture lets Manifold use up to "four A15 cores for heavy computing tasks, and a single battery-saver core when performing simple calculations," DJI said.

Ubuntu maker Canonical is excited about the new computer, noting that it "is compatible with third-party sensors and enables developers to connect a wide variety of devices such as infrared cameras, atmospheric research devices and geographical surveying equipment to the Matrice 100." Manifold collects and analyzes data in the air, making it "an efficient solution for developers in need of time-sensitive information," Canonical said.

Manifold uses Ubuntu 14.04, the latest Long Term Support version, which will be supported by Canonical until April 2019.