Embedded Computing Design

Logistics automation is the straightforward act of applying industry standards to the operation of a factory or warehouse to simplify its operation and organize it in ways that are not possible through more manual methods.

Smart retail refers to the concept of adding “intelligence” to traditional shopping methods. The global pandemic has expedited the smart retail process, as it allows the consumer to complete a transaction with little to no human interaction if desired.

On this episode, Brandon and Rich review highlights from Smart Manufacturing Day, including a debate on what Industry 5.0 truly means, and discuss the potential peril of code-heavy software-defined factories and vehicles.

In the world of manufacturing for industrial and rugged applications, including robotics, and artificial intelligence, the Made in America moniker brings a lot of cache.

In operating rooms, electronic medical devices are indispensable to healthcare diagnostics, real-time patient monitoring, and surgical visualization. But as crucial as these systems are, they are also potentially quite dangerous. If they aren’t dust-proof, water-tight, protected against power failure, and immune to electromagnetic interference, they present a range of dangers from electric shock to hosting bacteria.

To ensure healthcare workers can continue to access the patient data and productivity technology they need in the safest, most, reliable, and most hygienic manner possible, Wincomm has released the WMP-24M-PIS, a 23.8” LCD screen medical panel PC based on 10^th generation Intel® Core® processor technology.

The more data that’s generated, the more that needs to be stored. The more data that needs to be stored, the more bandwidth and capacity required from storage solutions.

In consumer electronics and the data center, technology roadmaps are in place to help offset the exponential demand for data acquisition and storage. But what about industrial computing?

The NVIDIA/Arm transaction may have fallen through, but that isn’t the only momentous merger and acquisition that’s been on the table in the embedded technology space.

On this episode of Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich ponder the possible reasons NVIDIA’s acquisition of Arm is on the brink of collapse.

High-level processing and extreme reliability are two precursors for AI in mission-critical edge applications. And that means blending the old with the new.

Despite, or maybe because of, the pandemic, Verified Market Research projects that the global Smart Manufacturing Market will grow at a 12.4% CAGR through 2028 to USD 589.98 billion.

This week, the Insiders recap a COVID-era Consumer Electronics Show and debate one of CES’s hottest topics: the metaverse. Broadly speaking, the metaverse could be an in-between where physical reality and virtual reality collide, or it could be an entirely digital alternate universe.

The world is now built on data intelligence, and that means we need to be connected and secure. We also need a whole lot of Ethernet.

High-speed LAN solutions are on the rise in industrial automation, surveillance, and gaming markets. But as these higher-bandwidth connectivity options find themselves beyond the core network infrastructure they must compensate for interference issues associated with the size of PCIe form factors, many of which cannot fit into today's compact IPC system designs.

Champions of the open-standard ISA expect it to start displacing competitive offerings en masse over the next few years. While that remains to be seen, the introduction of custom RISC-V instruction extensions, the formation industry-specific working groups, and advances in tools are redefining the technology’s true winners.

IoT edge devices are continuing to emerge in smart manufacturing with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). As these spaces continue to make use of edge intelligence, IIoT is becoming more beneficial to the management and visibility of automated manufacturing facilities that improve reliability and efficiency.

Of course, implementing AI and machine learning in industrial environments where space, cost, and safe operation are paramount is not as straightforward as flipping a switch.

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the need for smart, touchless, and reduced-contact shopping solutions, implemented either at the point of sale or through surveillance infrastructure. This has piqued interested in embedded AI technology, but to transform that interest into deployments, edge system OEMs and integrators need solutions that are high performance, with flexible connectivity, and designed to withstand varied commercial operating environments.

Developers worldwide are transitioning to programming languages like Python to increase their efficiency and time to market. If you’re going to make the switch for these reasons, you might as well go all the way.

Temperature constraints aren’t frequently discussed as a data bottleneck, but as more systems subjected to harsh environments are asked to join the IoT, that’s precisely what they are. It’s not uncommon, for example, for industrial or automotive embedded electronics to be subjected to temperatures as high as 125º C. In those instances, how do you ensure data integrity?

Ultra Temperature DDR4 DRAM modules from Innodisk.

On this episode of the Embedded Insiders, Brandon and Rich discuss recent findings that show 96% of manufacturing and automation companies who responded successfully to the COVID-19 pandemic had Industry 4.0 technology in place. But how? 

Safety- and mission-critical systems fail. But when they do, they have to fail safe and recover quickly. And, they can’t lose the most important part of the application – the data.