Manufacturers are increasingly using connected nodes to monitor production on the factory floor, as well as for surveillance, traffic, and retail applications.
Seeking processing power that can boost IoT board and blade performance, manufacturers are eagerly integrating ‘upgrades’ in microarchitecture.
Earlier this year ADL Embedded announced the ADLVIS-1700 CoaXPress/CameraLink vision system. The prototype debuted at Embedded World, in Nuremberg, Germany. At 5.0 x 7.0 x 7.6-inch, it is claimed to be the smallest CoaXPress system in the industry. It consists of a CoaXPress board inside the vision box (see Figure 1). The company has used the small PCIe/104 form factor, and believes it is the first to do so.
“The new, low-power versions of the high-end 64-bit Intel Core processors offer a highly configurable Thermal Design Power (TDP) of 15W.”
Compact and Connected
Both the ADLVIS-1700-CL Camera Link configuration and the ADLVIS-1700-CXP CoaXPress configuration are based on an Intel architecture (formerly known as Skylake) central processing unit (CPU), the QM87HD Intel® Core™ 6th Generation i7-4700EQ with 8GB DRAM. At Embedded World, the company explained that Skylake combines security with hardware level TPM 2.0 encryption technology and power virtualization capabilities. The vision system also brings the speed and resolution that has only been available on desktop Personal Computers (PCs) and larger devices to this small form factor.
Figure 1: The ADLVIS-1700 Vision System comprises a CoaXPress and Camera Link technologies.
The CL has a PCIe x16 EPIX Camera Link card, and the CXP configuration has PCIe x16 Euresys two-port CoaXPress framegrabber. There are four removable Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) drives (two SATA II and two SATA III) in each, and a single cable to provide power while sending data up to 300 feet. Transfer speed is 1200MB per second for image capture and storage. Target applications include 3D machine vision for factory automation, hyperspectral and multi-spectral imaging, traffic surveillance, security monitoring and control, military and defense Intelligence, Security and Reconnaissance (ISR), unmanned drone vision, and high frame-rate motion analysis and recording.
Industrial Controls
The company also uses dual and quad core Intel E3800-Atom processor options in the ADLEPC-1500 embedded PC, which is designed for unmanned systems, industrial controls, and robotics.
The compact PC measures 1.3 x 3.4 x 3.2 inches and has a wide voltage range of 20 to 30 VDC, a 24V nominal input (optional 7.0 to 36V) a temperature range of -20 to +50°C, and an extended range of -40 to +70 °C, for operation in a variety of harsh environments.
The PC is based on the ADLE3800SEC Single Board Computer (SBC), shown in Figure 2, with either the dual core Intel Atom E3800-3827 or quad core Intel Atom™ E3800-3845 low-power processors to support DirectX 11, Open GL 4.0 and full High Definition (HD) video playback. There is also on-board DisplayPort, USB 3.0, USB 2.0, M.2 KeyB 2242 SATA, and two Local Area Network (LAN) ports.
Figure 2: The ADLE3800SEC SBC has dual and quad core Intel Atom E3800 options to support graphics technologies.
