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Advantech adopts Intel Core ultra processors to accelerate Edge AI and Edge computing innovations

Tue, Jan 21, 2025

Advantech has announced that 12 products, including industrial motherboards, PICMG 1.3 full-size single board computers (SBCs), computer-on-modules, server motherboards, compact IPCs, modular IPCs, and AMR & robot solutions will incorporate the Intel Core Ultra processor (Series 2) into their latest edge computing and IoT solutions. This integration will boost AI efficiency and computing performance, reduce development time, and address power and thermal challenges, focusing on high-performance computing with low power consumption.

These product offerings are well-suited for various applications, including machine automation, machine vision, medical imaging, in-vitro diagnostics, automated optical inspection, smart warehouses (DWS systems), self-service kiosks, and edge AI applications.

Advantech products featuring Intel® Core Ultra processors (Series 2) are scheduled to launch starting Q2 2025. The desktop range will feature up to 24 CPU cores, delivering up to 36 total platform TOPS, while the mobile range will offer up to 16 CPU cores, providing up to 99 total platform TOPS. Both product lines are equipped with a Neural Processing Unit (NPU). They are designed to support diverse inferencing workloads and elevate AI acceleration to a new level, thereby supercharging edge computing in the AI era.

https://www.advantech.com

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Microchip announces new family of Switchtec PCIe Gen 4.0 16-lane switches

Thu, Jan 16, 2025

Efficient management of high-bandwidth data transfer and seamless communication between multiple devices or subsystems are critical in automotive, industrial and data centre applications, making PCIe switches an indispensable solution. They provide scalability, reliability and low-latency connectivity, which are crucial for handling the demanding workloads of modern High-Performance Computing (HPC) systems. Microchip Technology has announced sample availability of the new PCI100x family of Switchtec PCIe Gen 4.0 switches in variants to support packet switching and multi-host applications.

The PCI1005 is a packet switch which expands a single host PCIe port to as many as six endpoints. The PCI1003 device enables multi-host connectivity through Non-Transparent Bridging (NTB) and is fully configurable to support from 4–8 ports. All devices are compliant with the PCI-SIG Gen5 specification and operate up to 16GT/s. High-speed DMA is supported on all variants. Advanced Switchtec technology features include Automatic Error Reporting (AER), Downstream Port Containment (DPC) and Completion Timeout Synthesis (CTS). The PCI100x devices are available in wide temperature ranges including commercial (0°C to +70°C), industrial (−40°C to +85°C) and Automotive Grade 2 (−40°C to +105°C) ambient ratings.

“The PCI100x family is a cost-effective solution that does not compromise on high performance and high reliability. It enables designers to now take advantage of PCIe switch capabilities for mass market automotive and embedded computing applications,” said Charles Forni, vice president of Microchip’s USB and networking business unit. “In addition to these connectivity solutions, customers can get many critical components from Microchip including timing, power management and sensors.”

https://www.microchip.com

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Raspberry Pi’s Hailo 8L AI kit for complex AI vision applications

Wed, Dec 18, 2024

Mouser is now stocking the Hailo 8L AI kit from Raspberry Pi. The AI kit, which combines the pre-installed Raspberry Pi M.2 HAT+ with an M.2-format Hailo 8L AI accelerator, is ready to use out of the box. The Hailo 8L AI kit provides a cost-effective and power-efficient way to integrate high-performance artificial intelligence (AI) in applications, including process control, security, home automation, voice recognition, and robotics.

The Raspberry Pi Hailo 8L AI kit is a 13 tera-operations per second (TOPS) neural network inference accelerator built around the Hailo 8L chip. When installed on a Raspberry Pi 5, the kit allows users to quickly create complex AI vision applications with low latency and minimal power requirements. Neural networks for facial landmarking, instance segmentation, object detection, and other tasks run entirely on the Hailo 8L module, leaving the Raspberry Pi 5’s CPU free to handle different processes. A thermal pad, pre-fitted between the module and the HAT+, spreads heat across components to improve performance and ensure consistent operation.

The Hailo 8L AI Kit includes a 16mm stacking header, spacers, and screws for easy installation in a Raspberry Pi 5 with the Raspberry Pi Active Cooler in place. Fully integrated into Raspberry Pi’s camera software stack, the kit simplifies image processing for real-world, AI-based vision applications. The Hailo 8L AI Kit meets Raspberry Pi’s HAT+ specification and has an operating temperature range of 0℃ to 50℃.

https://www.mouser.com

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Microchip expands PolarFire FPGA and SoC solution stacks

Fri, Dec 13, 2024

The rise of IoT, industrial automation and smart robotics, along with the proliferation of medical imaging solutions to the intelligent edge, has made designing these types of power and thermally constrained applications more complex than ever before. To address the critical challenges of accelerating product development cycles and easing complicated development processes, Microchip has released PolarFire FPGA and SoC solution stacks for smart robotics and medical imaging. These new releases build upon Microchip’s smart embedded vision, industrial edge and intelligent edge communications stacks already available.

The solution stacks include firmware and IP cores for AI-assisted 4K60 computer vision, a diverse set of ready-to-use sensor and camera interfaces and integrated hardware for high-speed Ethernet protocols. Real-time ROS-2 compatible cores facilitate robotics tasks for perception and coordinate transformation. The stacks offer time-sensitive industrial networking protocols for OPC/UA, rich operating systems support and asymmetric processing commonly used in industrial automation. Software design kits allow for a high-level of customisation and support diverse development environments centred around C/C++, RTL and popular machine learning frameworks, including the SmartHLS IDE, VectorBlox Accelerator SDK and the and Libero SoC Design Suite which has been certified for applications needing IEC61503 SIL 3 functional safety. The solution stacks bring together the industry’s most power-efficient and secure mid-range PolarFire FPGAs and PolarFire SoC FPGAs, a rich mix of hardware and software solutions with cyber security protections that allow system designers the freedom to innovate in medical imaging and robotics applications.

One example of Microchip’s innovative solution stacks can be found in its recently announced PolarFire FPGA Ethernet Sensor Bridge that works with the NVIDIA Holoscan sensor processing platform. With its ability to bridge real-time sensor data to NVIDIA Holoscan and the NVIDIA IGX and NVIDIA Jetson platforms for edge AI and robotics, the Sensor Bridge unlocks new edge-to-cloud applications, enables AI/ML inferencing and facilitates the adoption of AI in medical, industrial and automotive markets.

https://www.microchip.com

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