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Wednesday 9 June 2021
NVIDIA prepares for next-generation AI computing
NVIDIA, with the acquisition of Arm and its keen push in AI applications, has been aggressively releasing innovations to help improve datacenters' computing capability over AI workloads.During Computex 2021, NVIDIA unveiled several new hardware and software including NVIDIA BlueField-2 DPUs, NVIDIA-Certified Systems and NVIDIA Base Command Platform, for datacenter servers.The BlueField-2 is a data processing unit, offering high-speed networking, programmable Arm cores, hardware-accelerated encryption/decryption and additional offloads for networking, security and storage.As for how servers can benefit from the BlueField-2 DPU in performance boost, NVIDIA's Head of Enterprise Computing Manuvir Das explained that at the current state, some of the CPUs in servers can use up to around 30% of their capacities to handle the systems' average administration tasks, instead of supporting the operation of applications.The BlueField-2 DPU is designed to help servers handle the infrastructure works and free up the occupied resources at the CPUs and with the adoption of the DPUs, companies now need fewer servers to achieve the same workload since each server is able to do more work.It also works differently from accelerator cards. Comparing to GPU-based accelerator cards, which are used to accelerate application calculations, the DPU is primarily accelerating the networking activities between servers and storage as well as servers' I/O activities.The acceleration over the networking activities is also an advantage of the BlueField DPU as most other competing products available in the market are simply looking to move the workload to the chip without providing any acceleration.The DPU's Arm-based CPU cores and dedicated silicon chips also play keys in the acceleration for some parts of the network traffic, noted Das, adding that NVIDIA is also seeking to integrate its DPU and GPU into one chip in the long term.NVIDIA has partnered with many server companies including ASUS, GIGABYTE, Quanta Cloud Technology (QCT), Dell Technologies and Supermicro to release server products equipped with the DPUs.Since the DPU's job is mainly to help take workload off servers' CPUs, the hardware can be applied to servers for all kinds of industries and applications.However, security works of servers can particularly benefit from the DPU. With security growing more important to the cloud computing industry, the DPU is able to offload the heavy resource consuming task from CPUs.For NVIDIA-Certified Systems, the company has cooperated with server vendors to create a template for server architectures. The vendors need to have the correct setups and configurations of NVIDIA's hardware in their servers, and pass the benchmark in order to be certified, Das noted.With the NVIDIA certification, buyers of the certified servers are guaranteed of AI computing performance. They are also able to obtain support from NVIDIA on any performance issues with their software, as the chance of having issues with the hardware has already been minimized by following the certification guidelines.NVIDIA is also planning to expand the certification services to cover Arm-based servers in 2022. For AI applications, most workload is handled by servers' GPUs so vendors usually prefer equipping lighter CPUs for their systems to cut down power consumption. And Arm-based processors, which have been known for its low power usage, are perfect for vendors to build such a solution.NVIDIA has seen requests from vendors for providing assistance in creating Arm-based server solution and though the x86 architecture is still the mainstream of the server industry at the moment, NVIDIA still tries to satisfy customers' demand for niche applications, Das stated.NVIDIA's Base Command Platform is designed for large-scale, multi-user and multi-team AI development workflows hosted either on premises or in the cloud. It enables numerous researchers and data scientists to simultaneously work on accelerated computing resources, helping enterprises maximize the productivity of both their expert developers and their valuable AI infrastructure.Base Command Platform was originally a system used by NVIDIA internally for the company's engineering teams to share their latest contents and work progresses among data scientists for AI projects.With the platform growing mature and clients also having demand for such a system, NVIDIA has decided to make it available to customers.NVIDIA is responsible for the maintenance of Base Command Platform in terms of both software and hardware infrastructure, while the services' subscription and promotion will be handled by NetApp, Das said.When comes to the question of what the barriers to AI adoption at mainstream enterprises are today, Das pointed out that a key challenge that NVIDIA is seeing at the moment is the challenge of coordinating between data scientists, who are experts in AI training and models, and IT engineers, who specialize in traditional applications such as SAP and VMware. NVIDIA is hoping Base Command Platform will help smooth out the issue.As AI computing servers become more popularized among datacenters worldwide, Das expects volumes of NVIDIA-Certified servers to be a good indication for the penetration of AI-ready hardware. At the moment, most datacenter operators still acquire servers and GPU-accelerator cards separately, but the certification program should boost datacenter operators' demand for complete NVIDIA-certified server sets in the years to come.However, since servers' replacement cycle usually takes a couple of years, it may still require several years of replacement cycles for more mainstream datacenter servers to run AI computing.Das also shared the latest progresses of NVIDIA's projects with VMware including over vSphere and Project Monterey. VMware in March updated its vSphere with support to NVIDIA AI Enterprise software suite, but at the time, NVIDIA was only able to provide the early access version of its software to customers.This summer, VMware will bring another update to vSphere, and this time, NVIDIA will be able to provide the first general available version of the AI Enterprise software suite, allowing customers to move their development to production.Project Monterey is a case that NVIDIA is working with VMware to have VMware's software running on the BlueField DPU. Since VMware's hypervisor is completely running on CPUs, the project is aiming to have the DPU handling the hypervisor to reduce CPUs' workload.See a replay of NVIDIA COMPUTEX 2021 Keynote to get more details of NVIDIA Enterprise AI announcements.NVIDIA's Head of Enterprise Computing Manuvir Das
Wednesday 9 June 2021
AEWIN partners with D8AI to launch edge AI solutions
AEWIN announces partnership with D8AI to accelerate the arrival of AI empowered future. With continued growth in smart applications, D8AI solutions enable companies of all sizes to leverage the power of AI to provide better value and improve organizational efficiency.D8AI Chatbot solution is designed as enterprise-grade customer care AI that can provide relevant and timely assistance or response. It can integrate into many existing messaging and social media platforms, with a single unified management backend. This allows easy management and monitoring of user interactions.NLP Document Recognizer utilizes a proprietary AI enabled data extraction technology which can transform multiple optical and text data types simultaneously. These formats include Chinese, English, barcode, QR code, and other digital data. It can help organizations speed up digitization of paper documents for processing and storage in the database. It utilizes deep learning and computer vision in unison to find structure in data, which can be used for predictive analytics.Through this partnership, AEWIN has gained profound insights in AI technology and allowed us to customize BIOS and firmware for optimized results, as well as carefully chosen hardware specifications tuned for exacting needs."D8AI solutions offer an attractive option for enterprises and organizations to leverage the latest technologies to augment their internal processes. AEWIN's computing platforms are quintessential part of the equation," said Charles Lin, CEO at AEWIN. "With a balance of hardware and firmware optimization, we are able to achieve substantial performance gains. We are proud to present this solution to the market to exemplify what can be accomplished with tight cooperation between hardware and software partners.""AEWIN has been an indispensable partner. Their hardware and BIOS tuning expertise give us the computing performance we sought. AEWIN's hardware provides significant advantages over other servers on the market," said Richard Sheng, president and CTO of D8AI. "Through our partnership, we have gained a reliable partner that can provide insights to hardware designs and architectures that directly feed back into our software architecture to take advantage of the latest hardware innovations."D8AI user interfaceD8AI solution
Wednesday 9 June 2021
Micron unveils new products based on leading 176-layer NAND and 1-alpha DRAM process for the new data economy
The digital transformation driven by the convergence of AI and 5G has made data a key enabler of economic development. As a result, in addition to requiring higher computing performance, memory and storage components are playing an increasingly important role for various computing architectures. At 2021 Computex Taipei, Micron Technology unveiled several new products based on its leading 176-layer NAND and 1α (1-alpha) DRAM technology. Meanwhile, Sanjay Mehrotra, Micron President and CEO, and Raj Hazra, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Compute and Networking Business Unit, also gave speeches, explaining how the innovation of memory and storage can drive the expansion of AI applications, in a bid to realize the unlimited possibilities from data center to intelligent edge devices.The potential of data economySanjay Mehrotra pointed out in a keynote speech titled "Innovation for the Data Economy: Why today's infrastructure innovation brings data to life, powering insights for all" that technology innovations plays the central role in enabling enterprises to seize with accelerating data-driven insights, and drive the full potential of the data economy. According to McKinsey's study, advanced data analytics technologies will add $13 trillion to the global economy by 2030, and the added value is driven by our ability to make better and faster decisions from the massive amount of data."Innovation is occurring more rapidly than ever before," he said. "AI and 5G are at the heart of this change, and the combination of these two technologies is able to create newfound opportunities for the post-pandemic world."First, with the rapid development of AI, by 2025, it is estimated that 75% of enterprises will have shifted from piloting AI solutions to operationalizing them, bringing comprehensive changes in all industries. The pervasive AI applications also stimulated the transformation of computing platforms, so that data analysis can be carried out better and faster. With its ultra-high bandwidth, multitude of connections, and low-latency capabilities, 5G will fuel the growth of the intelligent edge of our network, providing real-time access and process of data.Sanjay Mehrotra emphasized, "All data comes to life through memory and storage, where Micron shines. This growth and transformation presents an opening for technology innovation to deliver bold new solutions for data center, network infrastructure, and intelligent edge devices."The world's first 176-layer NANDsUnderpinning by three strategies, including advanced process node technology, product innovation, and building ecosystem, Micron aims to take the lead in the market. During the speech, Mehrotra announced volume production of the company's first PCIe Gen4 solid-state drives (SSDs) built with the world's first 176-layer NAND. It will be able to support the PC market for data-intensive workloads with higher performance, lower power consumption and a more elaborate size.In addition, Micron is shipping LPDDR4x in volume on its leading 1α node this month, quickly following the introduction of initial 1α node DRAM products in January 2021. The company has also completed validation of its 1α-based DDR4 on leading data center platforms, including 3rd Generation AMD EPYC. Both are in volume production in Micron's advanced DRAM fabrication facilities in Taiwan, including its newly established A3 facility in Taichung.For automotive applications, Micron announced that it is sampling 128GB and 256GB densities of its 96-layer NAND as part of its new portfolio of UFS 3.1 managed NAND products.The key to AI innovationAs the industry moves towards the goal of AI ubiquity, what are the challenges to be solved ahead? Raj Hazra explained the importance of memory innovation for expanding AI applications in a speech titled "Memory Is at the Heart of AI Innovation" and at Micron's Computex pre-show press conference.He pointed out that traditional server architectures were built around the needs of the CPU. With the rise of data-intensive workloads like AI, HPC and advanced analytics, we tried to add more CPU or heterogeneous cores to cope with these new challenges. But memory innovation has not kept pace with compute growth, which makes memory the bottleneck in compute architectures.Therefore, memory and storage are becoming central to platform innovation. This is why, when the industry defined the next standard for DRAM innovation it centered that innovation - for the first time - on data center requirements and not client platform needs.DDR5 is a once-in-a-decade platform innovation delivering much-needed advancements in memory bandwidth, density and data center capability. In order to speed market adoption of DDR5, Micron has made significant momentum with its Technology Enablement Program (TEP) for DDR5, which was launched in 2020. The program has now engaged more than 250 design and technical leaders from more than 100 industry leaders.The Future of MemoryApart from DDR5, Raj Hazra said that in order to support AI training and high-performance computing workloads, we should renovate the existing CPU-centric platform by providing breakthrough memory capacity to meet the application requirements of data centers.In light of this, Micron announced its support of Compute Express Link (CXL) standard, which aims to transform fundamental compute architectures, enabling new connectivity between compute logic and memory across CPU, GPU and other accelerator technologies, as well as configuring resources upon workloads in real time."Memory must be closer to compute units for faster read and write which can significantly improve the power efficiency. With the introduction of the new open CXL standard, the industry is on the cusp of realizing fully composable data center architectures, enabling to connect CPUs to GPUs and accelerators, storage, memory and networking."In particular, as AI models become increasingly larger, whether it is scaling up or scaling out, we are now facing various challenges such as power consumption, cost, latency, and capacity. By implementing a new memory hierarchy, including near memory such as high-bandwidth in-package direct attached memory, and far memory such as CXL attached memory, great improvement will occur to the processing performance in the hot data zone.Raj Hazra said that, with this architectural innovation, the future composable data center will be optimized infrastructures that can tackle any number of data-centric workloads - from AI training to simulation and modeling to database management and analytics. Actively developing CXL products, Micron is now arming with comprehensive memory and storage product portfolios to meet the various needs of AI computing.Please visit Micron website for more.Micron President and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra
Tuesday 8 June 2021
GUC tapes out AI/HPC/networking platform on TSMC CoWoS technology
Global Unichip Corp. (GUC), the Advanced ASIC Leader, announced today that it has successfully taped out AI/HPC/Networking CoWoS Platform with 7.2 Gbps HBM3 Controller and PHY, GLink-2.5D and third-party 112G-LR SerDes IPs. The main die of the platform contains the world's first HBM3 Controller and PHY IP with a record-high 7.2 Gbps performance. The platform meets strict signal and power integrity (SI and PI) requirements of 112G-LR SerDes routed through TSMC CoWoS technologies.GUC's GLink-2.5D interface enables high bandwidth, low latency, low power interconnection of several dies on the CoWoS platform. The success of the tape out breaks the limits of memory bandwidth and unleashes new potential for scalable Artificial Intelligence (AI), High Performance Computing (HPC), and Networking multi-die solutions.The platform represents real AI/HPC/Networking applications usage cases which require the high flexibility of SoC floorplans and HBM3 PHY/Controller arrangements on the main die vs. HBM3 memory on interposers. GUC's patent-pending solution allows HBM3 bus routing between PHY and memory at any angle while keeping the same signal width and space as in traditional straight HBM bus routing. It allows shorter routing, better signal integrity, higher speed and lower power consumption than traditional zig-zag HBM bus routing. Our products can support up to 10 HBM3 memories connected to two SoC dies by using splitting PHY technology. GUC's patent-pending solution enables the splitting of the central HBM3 memory bus to PHYs, located on two SoC dies to allow full HBM3 utilization in 2:6 or 2:10 SoC:HBM3 memory use cases.GUC's design for CoWoS and interposer supports 112G-LR SerDes signaling by adopting in-house interposer design flow and the latest TSMC CoWoS technology. To represent typical AI/HPC/Networking chip conditions, multiple instances of HBM3, 112G-LR SerDes and GLink-2.5D IPs were integrated into this big die CoWoS platform with high power consumption. GUC implemented a high coverage DFT solution for both wafer-level and final production tests. The DFT solution takes advantage of HBM3 and GLink-2.5D lane redundancy and repair to maximize CoWoS yield."We are proud to be the world's first company to tape out a full-scale 7.2 Gbps HBM3 controller and PHY IP. GUC has again demonstrated industry leadership in offering a total solution for advanced packaging technology.", said Dr. Ken Chen, president of GUC. "We have complemented our HBM2E PHY/Controller, GLink-2.5D and GLink-3D IP portfolio with HBM3. Together with CoWoS, InFO_oS, 3DIC design expertise, package design, electrical and thermal simulations, DFT and production testing, we provide cutting edge solutions to our customers and assist them to achieve even greater success in their products and businesses.""We integrated multiple instances of HBM3, 112G-LR SerDes and GLink-2.5D IPs and much highly complex toggling logic in 280 mm2, 400W die and assembled multiple dies and HBM3 memories on a CoWoS platform. It validates our IPs at large scale AI/HPC/Networking chip conditions and brings the high confidence of our IPs robust operation to high scale products." said Igor Elkanovich, CTO of GUC. "We used our multi-lane 112Gbps package design expertise together with silicon-correlated high-speed interposer design flow to validate 112Gbps over the latest CoWoS solution."Key features of the GUC's AI/HPC/Networking CoWoS Platform:*World 1st full functional HBM3 Controller and PHY at 7.2 Gbps*CoWoS interposer and package meet tight 112G-LR SerDes requirements *GLink-2.5D interface connecting multiple dies over CoWoS*280 mm2 single die with 400W configurable power consumption and multiple dies assembly on CoWoS together with HBM3 memories *GUC's patent-pending interposer routing to support any angle zig-zag routing, and split HBM3 PHY into two SoCs usage *Full DFT solution for both wafer test and final test of assembled dies including HBM3 and GLink-2.5D lane redundancy and repairTo learn more about GUC's HBM3/2E, GLink-2.5D/3D IP portfolio and InFO/CoWoS/3DIC total solution, please contact your GUC sales representative directly or email guc_sales@guc-asic.com
Tuesday 8 June 2021
ASM Pacific Technology leads the upsurge and breakthrough of camera sensors
The outbreak of COVID-19 has brought a massive change to the world. People are connected by digital data on an unprecedented scale. A part of our life takes place in a virtual environment and the world is greatly transformed by things like digital workplace, virtual learning, mobile web, cloud computing, and Internet of Things (IoT), indicating how smart life has truly become the new normal."Smart homes, smart cities, and smart manufacturing compose a smart life environment in which we are living. As the degree of automation keeps rising, camera image sensors have become the key enabling hardware connecting the world with the computers in the network," said Benny Au, Assistant Vice President in CIS of ASM Pacific Technology (ASMPT).Benny emphasized that camera modules are an essential component of all these smart technologies. For individuals, cameras are frequently found on your smartphones, smart home appliances, drones, security control safety driving systems, and electric vehicles. For industry applications, cameras are making a significant contribution in areas including robotic, factory automation, and process control, enhancing productivity to a new height.Camera applications have undergone a rapid expansion in the last 20 years, especially in the smartphone market. In order to deliver superior image clarity within a shrinking profile, and more functionality including super-zoom and ultra-wide-angle shooting to the end-users, the traditional camera module assembly method has been replaced by more advanced optical assembly technologies like Active Alignment (AA) and Active Optical Alignment (AOA).Another big trend of camera applications is happening in the automotive industry. High-resolution cameras, combined with LiDAR and radar located in different parts of the vehicle, create a map of the surroundings, hence allowing real-time interactions between the vehicle and other users on the road.Yole's report on sensing and computing for ADAS vehiclesIn the future, the camera module market is going to keep expanding with a wide range of applications. The expectation of quality will become higher and the design of cameras will be more complex. Tough challenges like the pressure on price, technology innovation, and yield are expected to be waiting ahead. With a forethoughtful mindset and the pursuit of technology advancement, camera module providers will be well-prepared for the fast development in the future."This is when ASM Pacific Technology comes into play," noted Benny. ASMPT provides advanced manufacturing solutions in the CIS market, including the consumer market, automotive market as well as factory automation. To think one step ahead, ASMPT has been utilizing AIoT system, SkyEye in its inline solutions to achieve zero-defect manufacturing. The closed-loop systems and AI power enable exceptional quality control and cost control. With the expertise and experience in the industry, ASMPT CIS equipment products are capable of producing camera modules with high yield and productivity."To stay at the forefront of the future development of camera sensors, ASMPT has established close partnership with our key customers and end-users to provide them with our Smart Manufacturing Solutions. We hope to innovate with them to create product differentiations at low costs and superior quality. With our leading CIS platform technologies, ASMPT is ready to support our future society in the journey of digital transformation," said Benny.Please visit ASMPT official website for more articles.Smart life as the New NormalASMPT ACamLin (Advanced Automotive Camera Line) with Skyeye system
Monday 7 June 2021
AEWIN partners with UNISEM to launch edge AI solutions
AEWIN announces partnership with UNISEM to leap into the AI-assisted future. UNISEM has taken its video analytics expertise and implemented it into useful real-world applications. These innovative AI solutions will change the landscape of how things are done in the near future.UniTraffic is a piece of the future smart city. The traffic management technology utilizes deep learning-based image processing technology and multi-object detection that counts and classifies on-road objects such as pedestrians, automobiles, motorcycles, and trucks. At the same time, it can detect the license plate number of vehicles that violated traffic regulations. It has 99% accuracy for multiple object recognition in real-time. UniTraffic solution is useful for city planners by providing statistics and traffic flow patterns to plan future infrastructural development and upgrades. Likewise, for city administration and police departments, UniTraffic can minimize the time used for administering tickets and reduce personnel costs.UniSafety is based on video analytics technology enhanced with deep learning that allows detection of various dangerous situations, such as fire, falling materials, abnormal process, crush injury, non-wearing of safety equipment, intrusion, etc, that can occur during the production process. In the case of an accident or unusual situation, the system informs the safety supervisors via web-dashboard notification, text message, and loudspeaker. It also offers motion detection for detecting unauthorized access or intrusions. This can allow a more open working space without using barriers to keep out intruders."UNISEM's vision aligned closely with AEWIN's hardware development roadmap. The continued relationship allowed us the integrate designs optimal for UNISEM's specific hardware requirements," Charles Lin, CEO at AEWIN. "Today's announcement is the result of the past few years of cooperation. Through repeated testing and benchmarking, AEWIN has thoroughly investigated the performance characteristics of the UNISEM software suite that allows us to provide a workload-optimized total solution.""AEWIN has been exceedingly helpful in our quest to find the right hardware to host our solutions. AEWIN has not only provided insights in hardware design and selection, as well as taking our software in-house to provide customized firmware specific for our workloads," said Jung Boo Eun, the Managing Director from UNISEM. "AEWIN hardware greatly outperforms other off-the-shelf hardware. We're excited to deepen our partnership with AEWIN to provide workload-optimized solutions that will help you change the world."Learn More:http://www.aewin.com https://www.UNISEMiot.com/ https://unisemiot.com/content/unitraffic-introduction/https://unisemiot.com/content/unisafety-introduction/UniTraffic:https://www.aewin.com/application/ai-deep-learning-traffic-management-solution-unitraffic/UniSafety :https://www.aewin.com/application/ai-based-computer-vision-solution-unisafety/UniSafety smart factory solution
Friday 4 June 2021
Optimizing wireless communication quality, iST makes compatibility an issue of the past
Although wireless technology has become the communication medium of choice for many types of technology products in recent years, wired communication remains the preferred choice for data transmission, thanks to its stability and bandwidth advantage. Communication standards such as HDMI, PCIe, USB, etc have become essential specifications for all kinds of electronic devices in daily life. Therefore, the compatibility of wired communication standards has become a key focus of product design.Tony Wang, director of the Signal Integrity Business Unit at Integrated Service Technology Inc (iST), would especially like to remind industry players that in the current Internet era, poor consumer experiences tend to get quickly amplified. He recommends that a thorough suite of compatibility tests should be conducted early on in development to reduce subsequent processing costs.Wired communication has long been an essential technology for modern life, found everywhere from single devices to whole systems. Whether it is HDMI for TVs, PCI-e as a bridge for information transmission within electronic platforms, or USB as the most popular and constantly evolving standard, they are all technologies indispensable for system operation. In addition to the above three standards, DisplayPort, DisplayHDR, MHL, SATA, etc are also crucial in the modern technology industry. However, Wang points out that while most of the above-mentioned standards are generally compatible and stable, there are still a few standards with suboptimal compatibility that can result in decreased stability as the number of connected devices increases. In addition, given that there are so many brands of equipment in the market, it is still difficult to ensure that wired communication standards between different brands are perfectly compatible with each other. As stated previously, consumers will leave negative comments on the Internet if they find that the connection quality of their device is poor, impacting the marketing of the product and the reputation of the brand. To solve this problem, iST offers a comprehensive suite of testing for connectivity signal integrity.Comprehensive Testing Ensures Product CompatibilityAccording to Wang, iST's verification analysis and testing services include focused ion beam (FIB) circuit editing, engineering sample preparation, failure analysis, signal integrity test, material analysis, reliability test, chemical analysis/consultancy, etc. For example, wired signal compatibility verification is a type of connectivity signal integrity test for which iST has a dedicated lab and team and covers a wide range of products, from consumer devices to IT systems. In addition to tests for the seven types of wired communication standards mentioned above, iST can also issue certifications for four of those standards: Display Port, DisplayHDR, HDMI, and MHL. For product analysis, iST also offers testing services for everything from ports and PCBs to laptops, desktops, televisions, etc.On the other hand, because the compatibility of wired communication protocols involves an extensive range of issues, iST offers testing services for all six phases of a product's life cycle. During the first phase of IC development, IST can test different versions of each standard to help customers fix errors and edit the IC to ensure the chip's functional integrity. The second phase is the integration of the IC application platform, where IST can provide various testing instruments and environments to help customers develop IC designs for the system integration platform. The company's team and lab can also perform system development assessments. During the board-side system signal quality verification in phase three and reliability test in phase four, iST can assist customers with testing both the stability and integrity of the product's signal.Phase five is compliance testing for various types of standards to certify that products meet specification requirements. Wang explains that standards like HDMI and DisplayPort have specifications set by their respective associations, and products must meet these requirements to be approved to use the logo of these standards. iST can provide testing for most of the standards currently available in the market.Lastly, phase six tests are for interoperability between branded equipment. Wang says that due to multiple brands of equipment coexisting in the market, compatibility issues between products will lead to poor user experience and causing the aforementioned negative comments on the Internet. Companies are therefore encouraged to focus on compatibility tests before product delivery to avoid potential negative press from affecting the sales of the product.iST's Extensive Industry Experience Allows for the Most Optimal Testing and Analysis ServicesWang points out that due to a multitude of brands and standards existing on the market, it is difficult to cover all wired communication standards. The scope of iST's testing service includes not only mainstream standards but also newer standards or standards with limited application areas. If a customer needs to test a standard that iST does not yet provide, the company will use its extensive experience to quickly grasp the key assessment points of the standard and build a suitable platform to complete testing in a short period of time.Even though iST possesses comprehensive capability for testing and verifying standards, what can clients do to ensure the smoothness of the subsequent processes? Wang says that the client should first internally define the product's key features and then have iST work with departments in the client's company to develop a testing plan. While this sort of planning can take more time than the subsequent testing itself, the process is bound to help with ensuring the compatibility of the product once it hits the market.Generally speaking, large brands usually have their own standard testing plan, and IST's extensive experience in this field can help clients meet the testing requirements of these brands. At the same time, iST is also equipped with a combination of new and existing equipment to optimize the efficiency of the testing process. In addition to offering testing programs for large brands, iST's experience in the field can also aid small and medium-sized manufacturers. iST understands from experience the most commonly seen and difficult to solve obstacles these companies may encounter, and knows precisely how to solve these obstacles. For example, although large equipment manufacturers tend to globalize their product specifications, they still make specific adjustments for different sales regions. Companies must fine-tune their product design to successfully connect with them. Therefore, before establishing a test program, IST will look to understand the client's marketing region and then make recommendations to modify the testing program accordingly such that test items with the highest relevancy are selected to improve product compatibility.Wang concluded by noting that many device functions require connectivity to another device. For this reason, the compatibility of wired communication standards has become a key factor in determining the quality of the user experience for electronic devices. iST has an established relationship with various major associations in charge of setting industry standards and has even been commissioned by some of them to provide education and training to Taiwan's electronic equipment manufacturers. In the future, iST will continue to enhance its analysis and testing services as well as provide training courses to help Taiwanese manufacturers optimize their products.Tony Wang, director of the Signal Integrity Business Unit at iST, points out that compatibility greatly influences the consumer experience and is an area that brands must do more to analyze and test.
Friday 4 June 2021
Leveraging computing performance of Intel processors - AEWIN's networking platforms have high efficiency and flexibility
In recent years, consumer and commercial markets have seen a sharp increase in demand. In order to keep up with this trend, enterprises have to upgrade their IT system functions; as a result, virtualization has risen to become one of the most sought after solutions. Through virtualization, enterprises can make the most of the performance delivered by IT systems. Therefore, apart from large-scale cloud service providers and independent software vendors (ISV) that have considered virtualization as the main infrastructure of their products, small-scale operators have also begun investing in this technology.AEWIN has navigated the network appliance sector for many years. Recently, the Company has launched a series of networking platforms based on the latest 3rd generation Intel Xeon processors. These platforms along with support from AEWIN can shorten the development time for ISV, helping them to swiftly build platforms for various network functions and edge AI applications.AEWIN has cooperated with Intel for many years and participated in a series of development projects of processors. Therefore, AEWIN can launch new computing platforms concurrently with Intel product announcements to allow ISV clients to build high-performance network computing and industrial-use solutions with the latest technologies. The recently launched SCB-1932 and BIS-5221 are great examples of this.The SCB-1932 is a 2U rack-mount hardware network system, providing a highly flexible networking platform. It is built upon Intel Whitley platform and supports 3rd Gen Xeon® Scalable Processors (Ice Lake-SP) and C621A/C627A PCH (Lewisburg). This new generation platform has a generational leap in computing power and supports up to 40 CPU cores and Ultra Path Interconnect (UPI) system bus that links up to 11.2 GT/s.The SCB-1932 supports 8x channels DDR4 RDIMM (up to 3,200 MHz) and a memory capacity of up to 1TB with 64 PCIe lanes per CPU. Front of the system supports up to 8 network expansion modules for flexible port configurations, such as 1/10/25/40/100 Gigabit optical fibers, with or without BYPASS function. The maximum total Ethernet bandwidth capacity is up to 1,000GbE. In addition, the SCB-1932 supports two front hot-swap 2.5" SATA HDD/SSD docks and onboard Compact Flash/m-SATA/M.2 slots for network storage applications. U.2 NVMe drives are supported with optional conversion kit for those that requires the highest bandwidth and heavy IOPS storage workloads.The BIS-5221 is a 2U/12-bay Hybrid Storage Server System that supports 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors. This new CPU architecture provides higher Instruction Per Clock (IPC) for a leap in performance. . Its 8-memory channels design (16 RDIMMs per CPU) support greater memory bandwidth and capacity. Moreover, the BIS-5221 has a flexible and scalable I/O interface, supporting up to 2x OCP 3.0 network cards and 8x standard PCIe slots. In terms of the system, the BIS-5221 features hot swap drive trays and PCIe slots (supporting up to 2 GPUs), with a cutting-edge design thermal solutions. All these designs provide stability, making this system reliable for AI, cloud computing, and information security appliances.Aside from high performance and stability, AEWIN has also strengthened the level of information security of the BIS-5221. The BIS-5221 adopts three types of Intel's information security designs: Total Memory Encryption (TME), Software Guard Extension (SGX), and Platform Firmware Resilience (PFR). TME is full memory encryption that prevents unauthorized programs from accessing data in RAM. SGX provides powerful hardware-based protection mechanisms for software. PFR is designed to protect firmware from tampering and unauthorized changes. It can detect and block external attacks and restore damaged firmware data back to its normal status.The SCB-1932 and the BIS-5221 are platforms designed to meet high computing demands. In the past, the cooperation between AEWIN and Intel mainly focused on IoT products, but now the focus of our cooperation has shifted to the fields of servers and data centers. Particularly in the recent years when enterprises have depended more and more heavily on high performance IT systems, AEWIN has expanded its project teams for increased VNF validation, performance optimization, firmware tuning, and offering customized services in order to help ISV build IT systems that suit their needs. Compared with off-the-shelf general purpose servers of commercial brands, AEWIN's products can deliver better performance for the same hardware specifications. In the future, AEWIN will continue to enhance the comprehensiveness of its product lines and service quality to provide customers with the best user experience.New servers powered by Intel's new CPUs from AEWINAEWIN SCB-1932 serverAEWIN BIS-5221 server
Thursday 3 June 2021
DataVan's smart epidemic prevention solution to boost business opportunities of post COVID-19
DataVan's smart epidemic prevention solution, Facelook X1, integrating contactless precision body temperature detection and fast attendance management is advantageous to boost business opportunities of COVID-19 with unique algorithm and intelligent data center."Currently many Taiwan's companies show great growth due to requirements from European and American markets even though Taiwan is suffering the first serious outbreak," said Kris Hsu, CEO at DataVan. "However, many companies also realize that it will be a common situation to live with virus in the future of post COVID-19. Therefore entrepreneurs should adopt more reliable and efficient epidemic prevention solution to meet long-term business operation and business development." Thus, Facelook X1 is expected to be as the best epidemic prevention solution for business environment with its advantages of precision body temperature detection and fast facial recognition. Many clients from medical, technology, and traditional industries all agreed that Facelook X1 is workable to upgrade safer and more efficient epidemic prevention, and can reduce costs of epidemic prevention and attendance management.According to feedbacks from clients, in addition to fast facial recognition, precision body temperature detection, large database capacity, easy installation, flexible extension, smart data center, one of the most attractive features of Facelook X1 is "Face Mask Detection". Facelook X1 is capable of 99.25% correct rate of facial recognition with mask through continuous AI machine learning. Meanwhile, Facelook X1 can automatically recognize face without mask and alarm, which leads to lower risk of infection and better effect of epidemic prevention.More information of Facelook X1 is available at DataVan official website https://www.DataVan.com.tw/home_en.php and https://reurl.cc/Akn07e.About DataVanWith 30yr+ experience, DataVan dedicated to providing enterprise IT products to serve a variety of vertical market including retail, business, banking, etc. Backed by modern technologies and refined engineering, our top-notch products help clients build a reliable solution that addresses their mission-critical needs. The DataVan team of professionals is committed to establishing long-term mutually beneficial collaboration for continuous product innovation and market growth.Learn more about the benefits of becoming a DataVan partner at http://www.datavan.com.tw.DataVan Facelook X1 solution
Thursday 3 June 2021
Bureau Veritas assists Phihong Technology in acquiring EV Ready certification, entering the charging station market in France
The electric vehicle market has been booming in recent years. Other than the vehicles themselves, many manufacturers have started to notice the business opportunities that electric vehicle charging stations could bring. But there are hundreds of different varieties of charging stations, and different related regulations for different places. If a manufacturer would like to enter the charging station market in France, acquiring the EV Ready certification is a must.In fact, Bureau Veritas (BV) is currently the only entity in the Asia-Pacific region that can provide EV Ready certification services. BV has already assisted Phihong Technology in Taiwan in acquiring the EV Ready certification, so that this Taiwanese charging station manufacturer can successfully enter the market in France.Phihong Technology had insight into this opportunity, and acted fast to become the first to acquire the EV Ready certification.So far, among all the charging station manufactures in Taiwan, only Phihong Technology has acquired the EV Ready certification through collaboration with BV. Many may wonder why is it that Phihong Technology is willing to commit time and resources to acquire the EV Ready certification?To answer this question, Phihong Technology pointed out that, in its early stages when the company first entered the China market, they encountered a lot of barriers and hardships. Although the China market has the fastest growth, it is also the quickest to change. Except for Tesla, which had established regulations, all others manufactures in the EV industry were all still finding their feet.With no established regulations and standards, there were a lot of inconsistent products in the beginning. Phihong Technology offered not just power supplies ranging from low wattage to high wattage models of several kilowatts, but also 80 to 100 different communication protocols between software and hardware. In the low wattage power industry, Phihong Technology only needed to deliver the product according to the clients' requirements, and then it was up to the distributors and brands to promote the product.However, the electric vehicle charging stations industry does not yet have common standards, so Phihong Technology's product specifications and designs must be continuously adjusted to meet the newest regulations of international organizations related to electric vehicles, which also change according to market trends. For the company's products, this isn't just a challenge in terms of difficulties in hardware design, but also in terms of software design, user interface, and user experience, as well as a continuous challenge for after-sales services, and maintenance capabilities, among others.As for why Phihong Technology chose to collaborate with BV, according to Phihong Technology, they selected their laboratory following the criteria of professionalism, quality, service, efficiency, and cost, in sequential order. BV has internationally accredited testing labs, experience with testing under different foreign regulations, and has achieved successful certification of EV products for local markets.In addition, Phihong Technology also believes that stepping into the vehicle charging supply chain from a cellphone charger supplier is not easy. Vehicle charging stations do not have global standards like cellphone power supplies, but are instead dependent on the energy infrastructure of different countries, and thus may operate under different safety regulations. In addition, as Phihong Technology had no actual operating results in early stages, they had great difficulties in the beginning. Phihong Technology positioned itself as the most professional hardware supplier, actively seeking collaboration with Europe's charging station management start-up firms or other major energy suppliers, and creating "super charging stations" that are tailored to meet the safety regulations of each country.Phihong Technology's original products were already designed for 180KW to 240KW, so upgrading the design for a 360KW output wasn't much of a challenge in terms of designing control. The most challenging part was actually the corresponding testing and verification for the 360KW output, as there were no vehicles at the time that could handle such a high current. In the early stages of development, they could only simulate the testing and reliability verification with testing equipment, and it was only until the later stages of development when Audi vehicles arrived in Taiwan that they could complete all the tests and verifications.In the future, the demand for high-mileage electric vehicles will get higher and higher, meaning that charging equipment will need to output higher and higher power. Phihong Technology has been continuously developing, upgrading, and improving the design of their high-power products and, to be honest, the pandemic from 2020 to 2021 was a helping hand for Phihong Technology's great achievements in Taiwan, as all the resources were focused on the development of Taiwan's electric vehicle industry, and establishing themselves in the electric vehicle industry.Aside from actively building a charge-friendly platform throughout Taiwan, Phihong Technology also joined the MIH Alliance, allowing the company to acquire first-hand information in the electric vehicle industry ecosystem, and collaborate with operators to widen their business. Phihong Technology's future plans include further establishing itself in Taiwan, collaborating with major vehicle and electric bus manufactures for further development, and to actively connect with European and American electric vehicle markets, and continuously seek business cooperation with European, American, and Chinese vehicle manufactures.Why is EV Ready important?Of course, there are other charging station certifications on the market, but EV Ready is the only one that offers a way into the French market. According to BV, compared to standard charging station certifications, EV Ready tests are stricter.How strict? According to BV, it generally takes just three months from testing to obtaining the certificate for standard charging station certifications. The EV Ready certification process, however, takes at least one year, which is comparatively much longer. Furthermore, the clients' products must already be of high quality, otherwise this process may take even longer.According to BV, during the year of product testing, it is possible that the clients' product may be unable to withstand the test, and the product may fail. When this happens, the client must modify their product to meet the regulations.For example, under normal circumstances, some tests may only last 100 hours. But in EV Ready, the testing time may take up to 1,000 to 2,000 hours. Additionally, criteria such as the temperature during testing and frequency of testing, among others, are stricter in EV Ready compared to standard charging station tests.Take charging cables for example. It may be necessary to try to damage the cables during testing, to simulate actual usage, such as if the cable was run over by vehicles, tossed on the ground directly, exposed to the sun and rain, or damaged by birds or insects, etc. The purpose of this test is to see if the clients' charging cable is able to withstand damage. If the charging cable is unable to withstand the damage, then it would fail the test.The role that BV plays during the EV Ready certification process is to help the client in testing their products, and offer support in ensuring that the products comply with the applicable regulations and restrictions. The overall aim of EV Ready is to test whether the charging station complies with safety regulations, and to test the EMC and the charging plugs.Furthermore, BV would ask clients to fill out any missing information they may have in their data. BV also reviews and certifies the data once it is complete.In order to assist clients in successfully acquiring the EV Ready certification, BV also assists in screening during the initial material and model selection phase of product design. This can reduce the wait times between tests deliveries, overall increasing the smoothness of the certification process.Also worth noting is that having the EV Ready certification for a product is still not enough, because the installation technician is also required to have the EV Ready certification when installing the product. In other words, a certified charging station still needs certified technicians to ensure no danger would occur on site. For this, BV also has qualified personnel to provide the related educational training.