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Axiomtek takes AI outside

Fri, Mar 12, 2021

Based on the Nvidia Jetson Xavier NI for AIoT applications, the AIE800-904-FL is Axiomteks’s latest AI embedded system. It is protected to IP67 and has a wide operating temperature range for use outdoors.

The AI inference system has a powerful six-core Nvidia Carmel Arm v8.2 (64-bit) processor and 384-core Nvidia Volta graphics processing unit (GPU). It offers accelerated computing and its IP67-rated housing protects from water and dust ingress. It is also rugged, with a wide operating temperature range of -30 to +50 degrees C and a vibration endurance for up to 3Grms.

The AIE800-904-FL is also equipped with M12 type I/O connectors and four waterproof N-jack antenna openings for operational stability in rugged environments. The Nvidia Jetson-based outdoor edge AI system is intended for use in outdoor applications such as traffic management, city security as well as smart manufacturing.

The AIE800-904-FL has 8Gbyte of LPDDR4x memory and 16Gbyte eMMC onboard. It has a wide range 100 to 240V AC power input with 10kV surge protection.

The AI inference system features one M.2 Key B 2242 SSD socket with a high-speed PCIe 2.0 x2 NVMe interface for storage. In addition, the embedded box PC is equipped with one GbE PoE port for IP camera video surveillance solutions including traffic flow monitoring, licence plate recognition, vehicle recognition, intrusion detection and access control.

The AIE800-904-FL brings computing capacity to the edge to enable AI applications directly on field devices, explained Annie Fu, a product manager, PM divison at Axiomtek.

The IP67-rated housing, industrial-grade anti-vibration, wide operating temperature capabilities and wide voltage AC input, with multiple M12-type I/Os, make the AIE800-904-FL suitable for severe applications in outdoor environments, Fu said. “Taking traffic management as an example, a high-performance system that can accurately detect, record, process, and transmit huge streams of data is indispensable for a smart city,” she concluded.

The AIE800-904-FL AI embedded system supports one C3 USB 2.0 port, one M12 X-Code Gigabit PoE port, one M12 S-Code connector for AC power supply and one C3 HDMI port supporting full HD. The four waterproof N-jack antenna openings provide flexibility for WLAN or WWAN. The AI rugged computer has a full-size PCI Express Mini Card as well as a SIM card slot for 4G/LTE/GPRS connections.

It supports the open source operating system Linux Ubuntu 18.04 which is highly customisable. It also integrates Allxon Device Management Solutions (Allxon DMS) to provide cost-effective and simplified device management with comprehensive remote management capabilities. The system can be wall- or VESA-mounted.

http://www.axiomtek.com

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Renesas and NGK Insulators promote maintenance-free IoT

Fri, Mar 12, 2021

A reference design developed by ceramic specialist NGK Insulators and Renesas Electronics demonstrates the uses for maintenance-free IoT devices. It is based on NGK’s EnerCera battery series and Renesas’ RE family of low power microcontrollers.

Data collection and utilisation are ubiquitous as the IoT gathers pace, but this may be at odds with efforts for decarbonisation. For countries around the world to meet their goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions they will be required to reduce their power consumption even as they deploy numerous IoT devices for data collection purposes. To realise these targets, there is a need to develop maintenance-free IoT devices that can be powered by trace amounts of electric power obtainable from energy sources in the environment, such as peripheral light, heat, and vibration energy. It also requires a device that does not require battery replacement.

The EnerCera battery series is a lithium-ion rechargeable battery featuring a high capacity, low resistance, and long life despite having a compact, thin body. The EnerCera battery series can efficiently charge itself with a weak current and output an intermittent large current to drive functions such as sensing and communication. To power a device with the electric power stored in the battery, requires a microcontroller that links the battery with sensor ICs, communication ICs, and other components. NGK has developed a reference design with Renesas’ RE family of microcontrollers that are claimed to have industry-leading low power consumption.

“We are confident that the combination of NGK’s battery technology and Renesas’ ultra-low power consumption technology will accelerate the widespread adoption of battery maintenance-free IoT devices,” said Makoto Mizokuchi, head of Low Power Products at Renesas.

“I’m convinced that NGK’s collaboration with Renesas will promote the development of maintenance-free IoT devices, thereby helping to solve social issues while realising a decarbonised society.” said Iwao Ohwada, vice president and general manager, Advanced Device Components, Electronics Business Group at NGK.

As the first phase of collaboration, NGK and Renesas jointly-developed a reference design for wireless outdoor air quality sensing systems powered by solar cells. Monitoring pollution levels in outdoor air provides valuable insights on the associated health effects from elevated levels. Conventional sensing systems can result in problems such as requiring power cables due to their large power consumption and are subject to restrictions on sites where they could be installed. The combination of low power RE microcontrollers and low resistance, high capacity EnerCera batteries will enable constant measurement of outdoor air quality indexes at all times, even with only trace amounts of intermittent electric power obtainable from the solar cells. This will allow monitoring of the degree of atmospheric pollution without having to devote time and effort to power cable wiring and battery replacement. The system can also support long-distance radio communications such as low power wide area (LPWA) network technologies, enabling centralised management of measurements from numerous sensors in the field.

NGK and Renesas have said they will continue to jointly-develop reference designs to realise the widespread adoption of maintenance-free IoT devices that combine the EnerCera battery series and RE family in fields other than environmental monitoring.

https://www.ngk-insulators.com

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RA microcontrollers achieve SESIP and PSA Certified (Level 2)

Thu, Mar 11, 2021

IoT security for the RA family of 32bit Arm Cortex-M microcontrollers has been strengthened with the award of SESIP and PSA Certified qualifications, says Renesas.

PSA Certified offers a framework for securing connected devices, from analysis through to security assessment and certification. The framework provides standardised resources to help resolve the growing fragmentation of IoT requirements.

It has also confirmed the self-assessment-based Security Evaluation Standard for IoT Platforms (SESIP1) with Physical and Logical Attacker certifications.

Renesas’ RA6M4 microcontroller devices with the Flexible Software Package (FSP) have been certified to PSA Certified Level 2; this is in addition to PSA Certified Level 1 achieved by RA4 and RA6 series microcontrollers. The RA6M3, RA6M4, and RA4M2 microcontroller groups have achieved Security Evaluation Standard for IoT Platforms SESIP1 with Physical and Logical Attacker certifications.

In addition, Renesas RA microcontrollers offer IoT security by combining secure crypto engine IP with NIST CAVP certifications. This is addition to Arm TrustZone for Armv8-M. The RA devices incorporate hardware-based security features from simple AES acceleration to fully-integrated crypto sub-systems isolated within the microcontroller. The secure crypto engine provides symmetric and asymmetric encryption and decryption, hash functions, true random number generation (TRNG), and advanced key handling, including key generation and microcontroller-unique key wrapping. An access management circuit shuts down the crypto engine if the correct access protocol is not followed, and dedicated RAM ensures that plain text keys are never exposed to any CPU or peripheral bus.

PSA Certified is a third- party laboratory evaluation of a PSA Root of Trust (PSA-RoT). PSA Certified Level 2 provides evidence of protection against scalable software attacks. Evaluation Labs use vulnerability analysis and penetration testing of the PSA-RoT to establish if the nine security requirements of the PSA-RoT Protection Profile have been met.

SESIP is an optimised version of Common Criteria methodology (ISO 15408-3) for the evaluation of IoT components and connected platforms. It defines a catalogue of security functional requirements (SFRs), which the product developer can use to build a secure device, scaling appropriately for specific threat model and use case. SESIP also incorporates and refines common criteria security assurance requirements (SARs), including the requirement ALC_FLR.2 flaw reporting procedures, which Renesas addresses with Renesas Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) process and public web interface. Specifically designed for SFR reuse and mapping to other certifications, the SESIP methodology enables product developers to pursue appropriate certification of their device to other industry-standard certifications such as IEC 62443.

The RA family ecosystem accelerates the development of IoT applications with core technologies such as security, safety, connectivity and HMI. Engineers can use RA microcontrollers to develop IoT endpoint and edge devices for industrial and building automation, metering, healthcare, and home appliance applications. The RA family includes the RA2 series (up to 60MHz), RA4 series (up to 100MHz), RA6 series (up to 200MHz), and yet-to-be-released single/dual-core RA8 series.

http://www.renesas.com

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Advantech packs features into COMe Mini Type 10 module

Thu, Mar 11, 2021

Despite being the size of a business card, Advantech’s COMe Mini Type 10 module is populated with Intel’s 11th generation Core processors.

In addition to the Intel Core i7 processors, the SOM-7583 features on-board LPDDR4 memory and NVMe SSD. It supports multiple I/O and displays, including 2.5GbE LAN supporting time sensitive networking (TSN), a PCIe Gen 3 x4, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbits per second), two SATA Gen3, and two independent 4k displays. The platform has AI Acceleration with Intel Deep Learning Boost engine, vector neural network instructions (VNNI), which can improve the efficiency and increase the inference performance dramatically, says Advantech.

Based on demand, Advantech says it will offer Edge AI Suite software, the Intel OpenVINO toolkit.

The SOM-7583 is suitable for powerful computing applications in aerospace, defence, industrial control and transportation.

The SOM-7583 yields 40 per cent higher CPU performance, 60 per cent better graphics and five times AI performance than the previous generation module. It integrates with LPDDR4X 4266Mt/s IBECC RAM, up to 16Gbyte and on-board NVMe SSD which achieves a 10 times increase in the sequential reading and writing speed compared with eMMC 5.1.

The fanless thermal module is designed to dissipate heat and keep the system running under thermal design power (TDP) 15W at 60 degrees C ambient temperature.

The thermal module has a height at only 27mm and comes with a copper block for direct contact with the CPU. It then transfers the heat to the ambient via heat pipes soldered with stacked fins.

The SOM-7583 features USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10GT per second) and PCIe Gen 3 (8.0GT per second), both of which are considerably faster than the previous COMe mini solutions, reports Advantech. It is designed to enable low-latency networking performance in factory automation applications via 2.5GbE LAN with TSN. This improves the precision of data synchronisation over the network, and minimises jitter to reduce latency during real time device communication. Similarly, the SOM-7583 enables USB4 compliance via its carrier board design. A reference design is available to help partners integrate USB-C to the carrier board for portable devices, test equipment, and defence applications.

The SOM-7583 provides multi-layer security via BIOS secure boot and Intel’s FW TPM to protect user’s data. Advantech also offers a free trial of WISE-DeviceOn to facilitate SSD health, memory loading, CPU temperature, and measurement monitoring via an optimised user interface. The combination of WISE-DeviceOn OTA (over-the-air) and WOL (wake-on-LAN) enables customers to remotely schedule BIOS and software updates for factory capacity optimisation. Customised software bundling with on-board NVMe SSD enables fast data formatting which removes confidential information from internal storage to meet military and aerospace requirements.

The SOM-7583 is rugged, anti-vibration board which supports a wide range power input of 8.5 to 20V and extended temperature range of -40 to +85 degrees C.

http://www.advantech.eu

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Axiomtek takes AI outside

Renesas and NGK Insulators promote maintenance-free IoT

RA microcontrollers achieve SESIP and PSA Certified (Level 2)

Advantech packs features into COMe Mini Type 10 module

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