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ROS now supports 64-bit processor cores

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SEGGER has announced that its embOS real-time operating system now supports 64-bit processor cores.

Today, most IoT implementations and other sophisticated embedded applications rely on 32-bit CPUs. In the very near future, however, they will start migrating to higher performance 64-bit CPUs. This is because the latest generation of SoCs and FPGAs with advanced peripherals (like SuperSpeed USB and Gigabit Ethernet) tend to also come with powerful 64-bit CPU cores incorporated. Such peripherals are usually not available to the 32-bit core devices currently deployed.

With embOS, users can now easily upgrade to 64-bit systems while continuing to run the same application software as deployed to their current 32-bit platforms. This will ensure that the same deterministic real-time behavior is maintained while enabling even higher speeds to be delivered.

In many cases, the small footprint of embOS enables the use of 64-bit cores with just the on-chip RAM and cache memory. This eliminates the need for the inclusion of external RAM. The number of components is consequently lowered, thereby reducing both the complexity and cost of the end product.

embOS is a commercial RTOS that makes every bite count. It is available for use across all-silicon manufacturers’ platforms and directly supported by the experts who wrote the code.

Supercomputing platform delivers over 2 TB/sec of memory bandwidth

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NVIDIA unveiled the NVIDIA A100 80GB GPU — the latest innovation powering the NVIDIA HGX AI supercomputing platform — with twice the memory of its predecessor, providing researchers and engineers unprecedented speed and performance to unlock the next wave of AI and scientific breakthroughs.

The new A100 with HBM2e technology doubles the A100 40GB GPU’s high-bandwidth memory to 80GB and delivers over 2 terabytes per second of memory bandwidth. This allows data to be fed quickly to A100, the world’s fastest data center GPU, enabling researchers to accelerate their applications even faster and take on even larger models and datasets.

The NVIDIA A100 80GB GPU is available in NVIDIA DGX A100 and NVIDIA DGX Station A100 systems and expected to ship this quarter.

Leading systems providers Atos, Dell Technologies, Fujitsu, GIGABYTE, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Inspur, Lenovo, Quanta, and Supermicro are expected to begin offering systems built using HGX A100 integrated baseboards in four- or eight-GPU configurations featuring A100 80GB in the first half of 2021.

Building on the diverse capabilities of the A100 40GB, the 80GB version is ideal for a wide range of applications with enormous data memory requirements.

For AI training, recommender system models like DLRM have massive tables representing billions of users and billions of products. A100 80GB delivers up to a 3x speedup, so businesses can quickly retrain these models to deliver highly accurate recommendations.

The A100 80GB also enables training of the largest models with more parameters fitting within a single HGX-powered server such as GPT-2, a natural language processing model with superhuman generative text capability. This eliminates the need for data or model parallel architectures that can be time-consuming to implement and slow to run across multiple nodes.

With its multi-instance GPU (MIG) technology, A100 can be partitioned into up to seven GPU instances, each with 10GB of memory. This provides secure hardware isolation and maximizes GPU utilization for a variety of smaller workloads. For AI inferencing of automatic speech recognition models like RNN-T, a single A100 80GB MIG instance can service much larger batch sizes, delivering 1.25x higher inference throughput in production.

On a big data analytics benchmark for retail in the terabyte-size range, the A100 80GB boosts performance up to 2x, making it an ideal platform for delivering rapid insights on the largest of datasets. Businesses can make key decisions in real-time as data is updated dynamically.

For scientific applications, such as weather forecasting and quantum chemistry, the A100 80GB can deliver massive acceleration. Quantum Espresso, a materials simulation, achieved throughput gains of nearly 2x with a single node of A100 80GB.

Key Features of A100 80GB
The A100 80GB includes the many groundbreaking features of the NVIDIA Ampere architecture: Third-Generation Tensor Cores: Provide up to 20x AI throughput of the previous Volta generation with a new format TF32, as well as 2.5x FP64 for HPC, 20x INT8 for AI inference, and support for the BF16 data format; Larger, Faster HBM2e GPU Memory: Doubles the memory capacity and is the first in the industry to offer more than 2TB per second of memory bandwidth; MIG technology: Doubles the memory per isolated instance, providing up to seven MIGs with 10GB each; Structural Sparsity: Delivers up to a 2x speedup inferencing sparse models; Third-Generation NVLink and NVSwitch: Provide twice the GPU-to-GPU bandwidth of the previous generation interconnect technology, accelerating data transfers to the GPU for data-intensive workloads to 600 gigabytes per second

The A100 80GB GPU is a key element in NVIDIA HGX AI supercomputing platform, which brings together the full power of NVIDIA GPUs, NVIDIA NVLink, NVIDIA InfiniBand networking, and a fully optimized NVIDIA AI and HPC software stack to provide the highest application performance. It enables researchers and scientists to combine HPC, data analytics, and deep learning computing methods to advance scientific progress.

Reference design speeds MCU-based Alexa-Built-in products

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STMicroelectronics has released an Amazon-qualified reference design package for smart connected devices leveraging Alexa Voice Service (AVS) Integration for AWS IoT Core, which can be used to create Alexa Built-in products using simple microcontrollers (MCUs).

AVS Integration for AWS IoT Core has the ability to transform the way users interact with smart “things,” bringing cloud-based Alexa experiences to items such as toasters, cookers, thermostats, blinds, hairdryers, and many others with no need for significant investment in electronic hardware. This could hasten the end for traditional buttons and dials, leading to new generations of products that offer easy and natural user interactions, adaptable smart features, and access to cloud services such as cooking advice or reordering of consumables.

ST’s Amazon-qualified solution jump-starts the design of Alexa-enabled appliance controllers, with Alexa voice-user-interface software already integrated on high-performing MCUs of the STM32 family. The energy-efficient STM32, being the world’s most successful 32-bit Arm Cortex-M MCU family, is ideal for low-cost, small, and simple connected devices that require state-of-the-art features such as far-field audio capture and natural-language understanding.

ST’s AVS Integration for AWS IoT Core reference design contains a compact 36mm x 65mm main board that combines a high-performance STM32H743 MCU and Wi-Fi module.

Unlike other devices commonly used for Alexa products, such as digital signal processors (DSPs) and flashless processors, STM32 MCUs integrate all necessary system features including powerful audio front-end processing, local wake-word detection, communication interfaces, and memory, including RAM and Flash, in a single chip. This integration enables the board to have small dimensions and a simple layout for cost-effective deployment in customers’ end products.

The audio front end delivers outstanding far-field voice detection, even in noisy environments and with closely spaced microphones. Created by ST Authorized Partner DSP Concepts, distributed by ST as part of the STM32 MCU, and supported by ST channels, the front end comes with a free Audio Weaver tool license to help users easily fine-tune their designs.

Leveraging the features of the high-performance STM32 microcontrollers, users can customize and scale their designs by adding enhancements such as a second wake word, extra local commands, and a graphical display to combine with the voice-command capability for an even more compelling user experience.

Further simplifying prototyping and development, the reference design hardware includes an audio daughterboard as a separate module. This contains an ST FDA903D audio codec, user LEDs and buttons, and two MP23DB01HP MEMS microphones spaced at 36mm for size-constrained products such as power switched plugs. The hardware’s modularity lets users implement a custom daughterboard if application-specific mic spacing, acoustics, and user-interface definitions are needed.

The reference design includes fully developed software that provides the features needed to support Alexa products, including Audio-capture software; Advanced Audio Front End (AFE) with noise reduction, echo cancellation and advanced beam-forming signal processing for far-field audio detection; Amazon “Alexa” Wake Word; Connectivity to AWS IoT; Audio output software

Working with this reference design enables product designers to certify new end products with AVS faster and more easily than bringing up the entire system independently. Both the hardware and software content can be easily adapted to support individual customers’ new-product concepts.

The bill of materials (BOM) for the reference design is engineered to be less than $10 when purchasing the components in high volumes. Please contact your ST sales office for pricing options and sample requests.

Enterprise-grade 16-channel PCIe 4.0 NVMe hardware + firmware combo speeds SSD development

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Silicon Motion Technology Corporation announced the SM8266, a complete enterprise-grade 16-channel PCIe 4.0 NVMe hardware plus firmware turnkey SSD controller solution. Customers can rapidly develop and bring to market enterprise SSDs for data centers by using our complete development platform that includes a turnkey NVMe firmware stack and hardware reference design kit.

The SM8266 controller solution features Silicon Motion’s state-of-the-art firmware and hardware technology to provide consistent, low latency QoS domains. Offering capacity up to 16TB with 16 NAND flash channels, the SM8266 is designed to support the latest 3D TLC and QLC NAND flash technologies. To ensure enterprise-level reliability, data integrity, and retention at PCIe Gen4 performance, the SM8266 is equipped with Silicon Motion’s proprietary technologies including:

  • 6th generation NANDXtend technology, which incorporates machine learning algorithms supporting Silicon Motion’s proprietary high-performance LDPC error correction code (ECC) engine with RAID, ensuring better data integrity even in extreme operating environments.
  • End-to-end data path protection, which applies ECC to the SSD’s SRAM and DRAM buffers as well as to the primary NAND flash memory array. This maintains data integrity as data is transmitted between the host and the SSD, and between buffer memories and NAND flash.
  • Power loss protection, which eliminates the risk of data loss in the event of an unexpected power outage.

Other features of SM8266 include: High-performance PCIe Gen4 x4 & NVMe 1.4 compliance; Turnkey stacks enable standard NVMe SSD as well as proprietary Open-Channel and Key-Value SSD implementations; Support for up to 16TB of physical NAND capacity; Low and consistent latency enabled by physical and logical isolation; Ultra-high sequential read performance of up to 6.5GB/s and 950K sustained random read IOPS; Data security with AES 256-bit hardware supporting SED, Secure Boot, and TCG Opal

Touchscreen controller ICs eliminate need for separate emergency stop/unlock buttons

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To reduce the risk of fires in the kitchen and also floods in the laundry room, European IEC 60730 and U.S. UL 60730 Class B specifications require safety mechanisms in home appliances, such as ovens, cooktops, washing machines, and clothes dryers. Helping designers meet these functional safety requirements in touch screen enabled appliances, Microchip Technology Inc. announced its maXTouch MXT336UD-MAUHA1 capacitive touchscreen controller family — the market’s only touchscreen controllers to offer pre-certified, Class B firmware. The family includes three controllers, the MXT112UD-MAUHA1, the MXT228UD-MAUHA1, and the MXT336UD-MAUHA1, each fulfilling different screen size needs, ranging from 2-to 8-inches.

The Class B certified touch controllers offer unique safety-related features that enable system shut off through an intuitive soft button on a touchscreen, removing the requirement for an external safety certified stop or cancel button and associated microcontroller (MCU). They also allow an appliance to detect a touchscreen or appliance failure and shut down automatically through a variety of self-testing capabilities. For example, if the glass breaks on a cooktop, the touchscreen will turn dark and shut off the machine, eliminating accidental damage in the home. As the number of touch-enabled home appliances continues to increase, the MXT336UD-MAUHA1 family shifts the required safety functionality to a simplified single touchscreen interface, helping OEMs reduce costs and improve time to market.

In addition, this new family leverages a high signal to noise ratio (SNR) design and proprietary differential mutual acquisition scheme. This allows the machine to reliably detect and track multiple fingers on surfaces exposed to moisture, water, grease, and more — even if the user is wearing gloves.

Software and hardware tools are available. Software tools include maXTouch Studio and maXTouch Analyzer. Hardware tools include an evaluation kit, available upon request.

The MXT336UD-MAUHA1 family is available in volume production starting at $1.82 in 10,000-unit quantities.

Curved, side-mounted capacitive sensor optimized for mobile devices

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Fingerprint Cards AB announces the launch of a new, slim and curved capacitive touch sensor for biometric authentication. Following the success of the FPC1540 sensor, the uniquely curved FPC1542 sensor is set to enable innovation in the latest borderless smartphone designs.

As demand for side-mounted touch sensors grows, the curved sensor offers OEMs enhanced design flexibility while improving user experience with a seamlessly integrated sensor that can double as a power button or volume control, or be used to operate the camera shutter and to scroll. The sensor can be coated in a range of colors to complement the aesthetics of the smartphone design.

FPC1542 expands Fingerprints’ portfolio of capacitive sensors, that are now integrated on the front, back, and side of over 455 different mobile device models.

Fingerprints will start volume shipments in Q4 and expect the first smartphone using FPC1542 to be launched in Q1 2021.

COM-HPC carrier board includes interfaces for programming, firmware flashing, reset

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Congatec introduces the first carrier board and cooling solutions building the foundation of the new ecosystem for the brand new PICMG COM-HPC standard. They are a major milestone for the COM-HPC integration and have been created to accelerate the utilization of congatec’s COM-HPC modules based on the latest 11th Gen Intel Core processors (code name Tiger Lake). The new COM-HPC standard impresses with a broad range of latest high-speed interfaces such as PCIe Gen 4 and USB4, a future proof high-speed connector, and a comprehensive feature set for remote management. The latter, in particular, is of utmost importance for all the emerging broadband-connected edge applications, which range from dedicated edge devices to rugged edge clouds and real-time fogs.

Utilizing COM-HPC for the design-in of 11th Gen Intel Core processors provides immediate benefits for developers: PCIe Gen4 compliant connectivity, full USB 4.0 bandwidth, 2.5 GbE, SoundWire, and MIPI-CSI. Those who expect to need more or higher-performance PCIe or Ethernet interfaces with up to 25 GbE should also give preference to COM-HPC. Besides, developers who want to scale their high-performance systems up to edge and fog server performance with only one standard are given a good argument for implementing everything in COM-HPC. Finally, the prospect of being able to use modules that offer more comprehensive remote management functions is yet another reason to buy and try the new evaluation platform for the COM-HPC standard.

Designed for evaluation purposes, the ATX compliant carrier board conga-HPC/EVAL-Client for COM-HPC includes all R&D interfaces required for programming, firmware flashing, and reset. The new COM-HPC carrier board also incorporates all interfaces specified by the new COM-HPC Client standard and supports the extended temperature range from -40°C to +85°C. The board supports the COM-HPC sizes A, B, and C and comes with a variety of LAN data bandwidths, data transfer methods, and connectors. It is offered in different flavors to provide maximum flexibility for customers, including Ethernet KR, up to 2x 10 GbE, 2.5 GbE, and 1GbE support. The board further features 2 massively performant PCIe Gen4 x16 connectors for the latest high-performance extension cards. Over mezzanine cards, the carrier can run even higher-performance interfaces up to 4×25 GbE making this eval platform a perfect fit for massively connected edge devices.

AMD Ryzen embedded V2000 CPUs now on COM express modules

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Congatec significantly broadens the application areas of its AMD Ryzen Embedded processor-based COM Express Type 6 platforms towards smaller but more powerful system designs by premiering the brand new AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 processor launched on the COM Express Compact footprint. The new congatec conga-TCV2 powered by the new Ryzen Embedded V2000 processor impresses with up to 2x generational uplift in performance per watt [1], a 2x more CPU cores compared to previous generations [2], at only 76% of the previous size [3] on a 100% pin-compatible form factor.

The powerful AMD Ryzen Embedded V2000 SoC integrates AMD Radeon graphics, with up to 7 GPU compute units. The performance per watt improvements of the new ’Zen 2’ cores used by the CPU are based on the 7nm manufacturing process technology. The architecture optimization also adds an estimated 15% more instructions per clock to this improvement [4].

With up to 8 cores and 16 threads on a single BGA footprint, the new Computer-on-Modules are great candidates for digitization and parallel-processed edge analytics – including workload balancing and consolidation enabled by virtual machines on the basis of congatec’s RTS real-time hypervisor implementations.

Further application areas include all standard embedded applications, ranging from industrial box PCs and thin clients to embedded computing systems with impressive compute and graphics performance. Other applications include smart robotics, e-mobility, and autonomous vehicles that use deep learning to optimize their situational awareness.

These modules offer up to double the compute performance per watt and double the core count over the previous generations. Thanks to symmetrical multiprocessing capabilities, they also provide particularly high parallel processing performance with up to 16 threads. The modules feature 4MB L2 cache, 8MB L3 cache, and up to 32GB energy-efficient and fast dual-channel 64-bit DDR4 memory with up to 3200 MT/s and ECC support for maximum data security. The integrated AMD Radeon graphics with up to 7 compute units continue to support applications and use cases that need high-performance graphics computing.

The conga-TCV2 Computer-on-Module supports up to four independent displays with up to 4k60 UHD resolution over 3x DisplayPort 1.4/HDMI 2.1 and 1x LVDS/eDP. Further performance-oriented interfaces include 1x PEG 3.0 x8 and 8x PCIe Gen 3 Lanes, 2x USB 3.1 Gen 2, 8x USB 2.0, up to 2x SATA Gen 3, 1x Gbit Ethernet, 8 GPOIs I/Os, SPI, LPC, as well as 2x legacy UART provided by the board controller.

The supported hypervisor and operating systems include RTS Hypervisor as well as Microsoft Windows 10, Linux/Yocto, Android Q, and Wind River VxWorks. For safety-critical applications, the integrated AMD Secure Processor helps with hardware-accelerated encryption and decryption of RSA, SHA, and AES. TPM support is onboard as well [6].

Bidirectional level translator connects SD 3.0 memory with low-voltage processing hardware

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Diodes Incorporated announced the PI4ULS3V4857, an SD 3.0-compliant bidirectional level translator for use in communication, consumer, and computing system applications including smartphone handsets, notebooks, SD/MicroSD card readers, wireless access points, and 5G femtocells.

The PI4ULS3V4857 has the capacity to translate a 1.2V to 1.8V host side voltage into a memory card voltage signal of either 1.8V or 3.0V and vice versa. This allows SD 3.0 memory cards, which deliver much shorter transfer times than other data storage solutions, to be used in conjunction with the latest low-voltage microprocessors, SoCs, and ASICs.

With a clock rate reaching 208MHz, the PI4ULS3V4857 is able to support the fastest SD card interface currently available – SD 3.0 SDR104. This 6-bit device is also suitable for SDR50 (100MHz), SDR25 (50MHz), DDR50 (50MHz), and SDR12 (25MHz) operation. Backward compatibility means that it can handle legacy SD 2.0 high-speed (50MHz) and default-speed (25MHz) modes too.

By removing the need for an external level shifter, significant board space is saved. The built-in 100mA LDO voltage regulator and electro-magnetic interference (EMI) filters help to further reduce the system component count and limit bill-of-materials costs. 8kV electro-static discharge (ESD) protection has also been integrated into the translator device, thereby ensuring long-term operation.

Supplied in a small footprint, 20-ball WLCSP package, the PI4ULS3V4857 is available now at a unit price of $0.50 in 3000-piece quantities.

Industrial-grade router features global LTE Category 4 connectivity in single SKU

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Digi International launched the Digi IX10 industrial router. The newest addition to the Digi IX industrial cellular router family is purpose-built to provide cost-effective, rightsized connectivity in industrial infrastructure environments, including digital signage, critical asset monitoring, and unattended retail applications.
 
The Digi IX10 offers a comprehensive feature set with advanced manageability, security, reliability, and network intelligence in a rugged form factor for remote assets located in geographically dispersed locations and harsh industrial environments.
 
The router fully integrates with Digi Remote Manager, Digi’s acclaimed device management cloud platform that unlocks the full potential of IoT solutions. Remote Manager adds visibility into mission-critical assets along with group configuration, monitoring, and control of thousands of devices through a single console or integration into enterprise systems through available APIs. In addition, the IX10 provides in-depth traffic analysis and bandwidth monitoring through NetFlow, while enhancing device security and identity and data privacy through Digi TrustFence, Digi’s built-in security framework.
 
The Digi IX10 features global LTE Category 4 connectivity in a single SKU reducing the need for customers to maintain regional variants.   The IX10 will support RS-232/485 for out-of-band (OOB) management scenarios, as well as Modbus for use within industrial settings such as utility meters and reclosers, oilfield applications, and industrial automation. Through dual SIM slots and Digi SureLink, the IX10 provides reliable cellular connections with fast failover to maintain uptime via multiple cellular carriers.
 
This product debut comes on the heels of the Digi IX20 launch, demonstrating Digi’s commitment to providing a comprehensive suite of products and solutions that matches user needs and addresses highly complex connectivity challenges. Digi’s family of routers supports numerous industries, including industrial settings, transportation, traffic management, and emergency response.
 
The Digi IX10 is available now in the U.S., Canada, Europe (and countries that honor CE), Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Colombia. Certifications are ongoing for Mexico, Brazil, Singapore, and Malaysia, and are expected to be finalized by mid-next year.