Sector News

Arrow Electronics Joins Siemens’ MindSphere Partner Program to Extend its Industrial IoT Offering

Wed, Mar 20, 2019

Arrow Electronics announced today that it has joined the MindSphere Partner Program, Siemens’ program for industrial IoT solution and technology providers.

MindSphere is the cloud-based, open IoT operating system from Siemens that connects products, plants, systems and machines, enabling businesses to harness the wealth of data generated by the IoT with advanced analytics. As a MindSphere Platinum Partner, Arrow has multiple technical staff trained by Siemens through the MindSphere technical curriculum, a variety of MindSphere applications in development, and a joint go-to-market agreement to assist customers in achieving substantial business value through IoT technology generally and MindSphere specifically.

Arrow’s broad portfolio of products, services and expertise enables it to address every layer of an IoT solution stack, ranging from electronic components to IT solutions. Arrow provides coverage from the edge to end-of-life, including: sensors, connectivity, cloud, analytics, security, IT infrastructure, and asset disposition. IoT solutions providers can benefit from these and other services delivered by Arrow, such as remote management and monitoring, design and integration, as well as the digital transformation solutions offered by Arrow subsidiary eInfochips.

As a member of the Siemens MindSphere Partner Program, Arrow can offer market-ready solutions including Retrofit – which enables companies to integrate old industrial equipment with the new – smart city and end-to-end asset tracking. These, together with analytics services, help to keep the barriers to starting a new project low.

Aiden Mitchell, vice president of IoT global solutions, Arrow Electronics, said, “This arrangement with Siemens enables us to offer our customers leading industrial IoT solutions to solve their digital transformation challenges across their manufacturing enterprises. Arrow is well positioned to initiate and orchestrate all stages of industrial IoT projects, including hardware, software and technical – as well as business – services.”

Paul Kaeley, senior vice president, global partner ecosystem, Siemens PLM Software, said, “Arrow’s vision of IoT, “From Sensor to Sunset,” fits perfectly with the transformative business opportunities of introducing Siemens’ MindSphere IoT operating system into client environments. This offers complete solutions enabling businesses to deploy and manage secure pre-connected intelligent sensors and high-end devices throughout their entire lifecycle globally.”

Arrow will have a presence in the MindSphere Lounge at the Hanover Fair (Hall 9) where it will showcase the breadth of the company’s Industrial IoT offering.

Detailed information about Arrow’s operations can be found by visiting www.arrow.com

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AI computer holds promise for millions of intelligent systems

Wed, Mar 20, 2019

At this week’s GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California this week, Nvidia has announced an artificial intelligence (AI) computer that makes it possible to create millions of intelligent systems.

There are two versions of the Nvidia CUDA-X Jetson Nano computer, a $99 development kit for developers and makers, and a production-ready module, priced at $129 for companies to create mass-market edge systems.

The small CUDA-X AI computer delivers 472GFLOPS of compute performance for running modern AI workloads and is power-efficient, consuming as little as 5W.

Jetson Nano supports high-resolution sensors, can process many sensors in parallel and can run multiple modern neural networks on each sensor stream. It also supports many popular AI frameworks, allowing developers to integrate preferred models and frameworks.

The Jetson Nano developer kit is priced to bring the power of modern AI to a low-cost platform, for makers, inventors, developers and students to build AI projects, for example mobile robots and drones, digital assistants and automated appliances.

The kit includes support for full desktop Linux and is compatible with many popular peripherals and accessories. Ready-to-use projects and tutorials are included to help makers get started with AI fast.

The Jetson Nano module can be used in embedded applications, including network video recorders, home robots and intelligent gateways with full analytics capabilities.

The design includes power management, clocking, memory and fully accessible input/outputs. The AI workloads are entirely software defined, allowing companies to update performance and capabilities even after the system has been deployed.

To help customers easily move AI and machine learning (ML) workloads to the edge, Nvidia has worked with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to qualify AWS Internet of Things Greengrass to run optimally with Jetson-powered devices such as Jetson Nano.

Nvidia CUDA-X is made up of over 40 acceleration libraries for graphics processing unit (GPU) -accelerated computing. JetPack SDK is built on CUDA-X and is a complete AI software stack with accelerated libraries for deep learning, computer vision, computer graphics and multimedia processing that supports all of the Nvidia Jetson family, including Jetson AGX Xavier for fully autonomous machines and Jetson TX2 for AI at the edge.

JetPack includes the latest versions of CUDA, cuDNN, TensorRT and a full desktop Linux OS.

A reference platform has also be created to minimise the time spent on initial hardware assembly.

http://www.nvidia.com

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Small PoL DC/DC converter eases power management integration

Tue, Mar 19, 2019

TDK claims that its FS1406 uPOL point of load (PoL) DC/DC converter is the smallest available. It is scalable and configurable, with multi-time programmable memory.

It is designed for big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), 5G cells, IoT and computing enterprise applications.

While conventional DC/DC converters use side by side discrete integrated circuit (IC) and discrete inductor (L) the FS series integrates the IC and inductor in a compact 3.3 x 3.3 x 1.5mm package. It is particularly suitable for space-constrained applications requiring a low-profile power source, adds TDK.

The DC/DC converter minimises the external components required and its simplified design eases integration. The FS series can deliver a high density solution of 1W per mm3, while reducing size by 50 per cent, compared with other products available in its class, says TDK. This minimises system solution cost, reduces board size and assembly costs, as well as bill of materials and PCB costs. The DC/DC converter operates at a broad junction temperature range, from -40 to +125 degrees C.

uPOL products were developed by TDK’s Faraday Semi company. They combine high-performance semiconductors in advanced packaging technologies such as semiconductor embedded in substrate (SESUB) and advanced electronic components to achieve system integration in a smaller size and lower profile by 3D integration. This integration allows TDK to deliver higher efficiency and ease of use at a lower total system cost to what is currently available today.

μPOL technology includes a DC/DC converter placed in the vicinity of complex chipsets such as ASICs, FPGAs. It is by minimising the distance between the converter and the chipset, that the resistance and the inductance components are minimised, allowing fast response and accurate regulation with dynamic load currents.

The product family is rated for industrial application, is lead free and is RoHS- compliant.

Mass production of FS1406 is expected to begin in Q3 2019.

https://www.global.tdk.com

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Aitech integrates RedHawk Linux to Jetson-powered supercomputers

Mon, Mar 18, 2019

Two Nvidia Jetson TX2-based small form factor supercomputers have been introduced by Aitech. The military-grade A176 Cyclone and the industrial-focused A177 Twister enhance real-time computing for mission-critical applications with RedHawk Linux real time operating system (RTOS).

The combination of Jetson TX2 and the advanced development environment of RedHawk Linux are increase the power-to-performance ratio, explains Aitech.

“Guaranteeing real-time processor performance, low process-dispatch latencies and minimal process run-time jitter are challenging in a real-time operating environment,” said Dan Mor, GPGPU and HPEC product line manager at Aitech. He adds: “Using NVIDIA’s CUDA driver, combined with Concurrent Real-Time’s RedHawk Linux distribution, we can overcome many of these computing obstacles.”

Incorporating the Linux RedHawk RTOS into the Jetson artificial intelligence (AI) platform, helps advance real-time computing power. It offers field-proven, open-source Linux technology, advanced GUI debugging and analysis tools, and multi-core architecture support, to support high performance embedded computing (HPEC) systems.

RedHawk is also beneficial for complex embedded projects such as intelligent devices, advanced robotic systems and other autonomous applications. It has low latency, high determinism and debugging tools to support emerging Jetson-based products.

The compact A176 Cyclone is a military-grade, fanless, conduction-cooled, rugged general purpose graphics processing unit (GPGPU) small form factor (SFF) supercomputer that measures only 5.0 square inches (3225 square mm), while providing 1TFLOP of parallel processing, drawing less than 17W and weighing less than 2.2lbs (1kg).

It has multiple hardware I/O and software options (1553, ARINC 429, camera link/HD-SDI or composite frame grabbers) as well as internal microSD storage. The able to scale to more complex, compute intensive applications, enables fast integration that saves development time and money.

The A177 has the same functionality as the A176, but is designed for less rugged industrial environments. It handles complex computational requirements, such as managing multiple data and video streams and can also reach 1TFLOPS, while consuming only 17W. It weighs the same as the A176.

The two low-cost, low-power, size, weight and power (SWaP) -optimised) SFF GPGPUs use CUDA, deep learning acceleration capabilities and the real-time Linux software to ensure hard real-time performance, while several demanding embedded applications are running.

Typical uses include high data throughput and processing, such as image and data manipulation, application of digital filters, image and frame object edge detection, image recognition and data analysis, in a number of military (A176) and industrial (A177) applications.

https://www.rugged.com

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