The networking of Industry 4.0

We are facing a potentially exponential increase in the amount of data manufacturing systems will handle as vision systems, batch control, regulatory compliance, quality management and more will mean that the amount of data those networks have to handle is going to rocket.

As a result, we require sufficient bandwidth to allow for this increased use. At present, CC-Link IE is the only industrial automation networking technology that can provide a gigabit (1 Gbit/s) of bandwidth, which makes it exceptionally well placed to deal with the demands of Industry 4.0.

To find an example of how data intensive these applications can be one only has to look at the needs of the leading Korean flat panel display manufacturers. Their tolerance for so-called ‘dead pixels’ is almost zero. To put this into perspective, a modern HD screen has 1080 vertical pixels horizontally and 1920 vertically. That’s 2,073,600 pixels on each unit. The manufacturing processes have to check each of these pixels, hundreds of times a day to ensure quality and control yield. It’s easy to see how quickly applications like this will generate vast volumes of data.

As another example, the global automotive industry produces countless different combinations of each in-vehicle model at an incredible rate. It’s typical for an assembly plant to produce a complete vehicle at a rate of more than one per minute.

refer to:http://www.connectingindustry.com/automation/the-networking-implications-of-industry-40.aspx

Parts of the embedded system marketing

Part of the Gizmo Explorer Kit, the package “was designed to be flexible so that designers can customize the system according to their specific industrial development goals,” says Kerry Brown, Vice President and Chief Operations Officer, Sage Electronic Engineering.

Embedded computer is an Intel Atom-based platform equipped with interfaces like SATA, Gigabit Ethernet, and PCI Express, and is suited for applications such as networking appliance Storage (NAS) and network security, Garman says. “Professional embedded developers working on commercial products will like the fact that the MinnowBoard is open hardware, and can be customized without having to sign any Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs),” he adds.

GizmoSphere has also entered the maker market with x86 process technology, including an industrial AMD Embedded G-Series APU capable of 52.8 GFLOPS at under 10 W on their Gizmo board.

refer to:
http://embedded-computing.com/articles/diy-pushes-open-hardware-kindergarten-kickstarter/

Making up for each other in the embedded industry

With the advancement of customer success at the helm, the innovative strategies of JR automation and AWL-Techniek have aligned, creating a partnership that will allow global customer bases to benefit from an equally global system integrator presence. JR will service and support customers in the US, Canada, and Mexico, and AWL will support customers in Europe and China. Similarly, AWL is a leader in production industrial computer and experienced in the automotive and general industries with proficiency in laser welding.  With JR and AWL’s standing as leading global system integrators, this strategic embedded system partnership will facilitate an environment rich with knowledge, ability, and possibility for our customers.

refer to: http://www.automation.com/jr-automation-and-awl-techniek-join-forces

Stressing focus on embedded software dubugging

"For anyone working in the development of code for the automotive embedded computers sector, this should prove a very useful day," said Barry Lock, UK Manager of Lauterbach embedded computers. "There will be a lot of expertise at this event, and the presenters will be discussing the very latest developments in chip technology, software solutions and debug tools."

Much of the content will be based around the embedded computers development and validation of Autosar compliant code and the development of code for specific devices such as the BOSCH GTM, the AURIX and Freescale's Nexus based Qorivva solutions. Some of the presentations will also touch on the debugging of code on multicore systems. Delegates will also have the opportunity to discuss their specific challenges and requirements.

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/news/lauterbach-software-debugging-workshops/

Conflicting ideas for embedded computer industry

Designers of these embedded systems needed a small form factor, extremely rugged DDR3 module. This standard relieves designers from the former limitations of commercial-grade products that required soldering, straps, glue, or tie-downs to secure the module. However, the JEDEC membership initially did not recognize the need to accommodate ECC when it was developing the DDR2 specification on the SODIMM form factor because most laptop chipsets did not support ECC at the time. Seeing the need for ECC that could be implemented on faster DDR2 memory modules in embedded systems, Virtium sponsored the embedded  specification within JEDEC, which has been extended now to DDR3 and DDR4 modules.

refer to: http://embedded-computing.com/articles/ruggedization-memory-module-design/

See you at 2013 ESEC!

ACROSSER Technology announces our participation in 2013 the Embedded Systems Expo and Conference (ESEC) from May 8th to the 10th. The event will take place at the Tokyo International Exhibition Center in Tokyo, Japan. We warmly invite all customers to come and meet us at the west hall, booth number: WEST 10-61.

On networks built using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) building blocks

In recent years, building, maintaining, and evolving proprietary network systems for telecom-grade applications that are highly available and "always on" have become increasingly prohibitive from the perspective of cost, risk management, time to revenue, and so on. The custom-built approach becomes even less cost effective as Communications Service Providers (CSPs) move toward offering cloud-based services, where they have to compete with non-traditional providers that offer such services on networks built using Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) building blocks.

State of the industry

Wide adoption of several of these key standards has resulted in commercially viable COTS building blocks – hardware and software – that address various functional layers in a network-ready system quickly and cost effectively (Figure 1). This approach is being broadly employed by various industry players, and such platforms have been successfully deployed in networks worldwide. A few critical challenges, however, still remain:

Figure 1: The communications industry is migrating towards vertically integrated platforms.

There is increasing industry recognition of these challenges, and key players are stepping forward to effectively address them.

Network Applications Platform

The CSPs' need to bring innovative services to market quickly and at a competitive cost creates a direct challenge for NEPs to provide telecom network elements that meet their requirements. Not only does the approach of using platforms that are built with field-proven COTS building blocks help NEPs save R&D expense and time, it enables them to focus their precious resources on revenue-generating applications and services.

Oracle Corporation has been actively pursuing product programs designed to help NEPs transition to this approach. The Oracle Network Applications Platform (ONAP) is a pre-integrated, pre-tested engineered system using hardware and software assets designed to meet mission-critical communications network workloads. These COTS assets, that have already been deployed and tested in numerous commercial deployments in a variety of markets, span all layers of the platform – hardware, storage, Operating System (OS),virtualization, service availability, management, and a host of application services (Figure 2).

Figure 2: The Oracle Network Applications Platform provides high levels of availability by leveraging industry-standard COTS assets at all levels of the stack.

ONAP is designed with the objective of addressing the functional and non-functional requirements of a wide set of network and back office applications, and others. The extensible architecture of ONAP has been designed to provide resident applications with 5-nines and higher availability, end-to-end management, scalability, and reliability – all supported in multiple operating environments.

ONAP's architecture is designed to enable customers to maximize the value of their investments by leveraging a carrier-grade platform on which they can swiftly develop and deploy applications. It also provides optimized performance, High Availability (HA), and seamless integrated operations management for mission-critical deployments. ONAP accomplishes this by leveraging best-of-suite COTS technologies, including extensive use of the various services defined by the SAF to ensure continuous service availability of applications hosted on the platform.

The key tenets of the ONAP architecture are summarized here.

Unified Availability

ONAP implements a comprehensive availability management framework that, along with several supporting services, provides end-to-end availability lifecycle management for all layers of the system. ONAP Unified Availability monitors the health and availability of the platform infrastructure services, which affect application availability. This leads to a cohesive availability management model that encompasses the entire stack – from hardware to the application – and drives the highest level of application availability. This is a unique approach that brings together technologies that offer carrier-grade service availability to telecom and IT applications. These technologies form the basis of two COTS products that have been field-hardened in a large number of telecom and enterprise applications worldwide for several years.

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Through the use of the SAF Application Interface Specification (AIS)Availability Management Framework (AMF) and Cluster Membership (CLM) services, these two powerful products have been integrated within ONAP and offer critical functionality to ensure data and session integrity in a wide variety of network and back office applications.

ONAP abstracts the underlying platform from the application developers by providing a set of SAF AIS Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and Clusterware interfaces as part of a Software Development Kit (SDK).

Unified Management

ONAP brings forth a set of COTS technologies and products, each with sophisticated functionality at various layers of the integrated stack. Managing such an integrated platform can be complex and challenging. ONAP implements a comprehensive management framework and related services that provide a consistent and unified approach to managing the entire platform – from hardware to the application(s) and the intervening middleware, Platform Service Modules (PSMs), application services, and so on. The Unified Management capability leverages field-proven technologies and products that have been widely deployed to provide management solutions to a variety of applications. Unified Management covers a broad set of management requirements of the platform

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Extensible architecture

ONAP has been designed and implemented to meet the requirements of a wide variety of network and network-facing applications. Whereas the base platform addresses the common requirements of such applications, ONAP also provides the ability to optionally integrate other technologies and solutions from Oracle, as well as third-party databases, Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs), application services, and protocol suites, for example. Such solutions, referred to by ONAP as PSMs, become native to ONAP and enjoy the benefits of Unified Availability and Unified Management once integrated.

Operating environments

ONAP offers four major operating environments – an OS and CPU combination that exposes a particular Application Binary Interface (ABI) for use by the overlaying application

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Virtualization of the operating environment is provided through the use of Oracle Virtual Server (OVS), which offers a broad set of capabilities:

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Vertical Integration

ONAP's uniqueness is due to yet another important factor. Other than any potential optional third-party PSMs, Oracle owns the intellectual property of the ONAP engineered COTS system, offering several advantages to the user

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Integration Development Kit

Integration of applications on ONAP is supported through a set of APIs provided by an Integration Development Kit (IDK). These API expose various capabilities of Unified Availability and Unified Management for use by the application integrator. This kit also provides packagingtools necessary to create software releases for ONAP deployment. Once the overall configuration of the system is determined, the IDK is used to create an appliance ready for intended deployment.

A final word

In recent years the COTS hardware and software industry has made significant strides towards building and providing products that meet the functionality, availability, manageability, and scalability requirements of demanding applications such as telecom. Network elements built through integration of such components have become viable and are being deployed in networks worldwide. However, this approach is not without its challenges – NEPs and CSPs following this path often have to manage multiple suppliers, coordinate their developments, and navigate disparate and complex support structures. By adopting a platform such as ONAP, NEPs and CSPs can leverage the ecosystem effectively and save cost, time, and effort required to build or integrate such systems in-house.

 

refer to : http://xtca-systems.com/articles/engineered-cots-network-systems/