COMPONENT DESIGN


maximum uptime in 24/7/365 operation. This allows deployment directly at the point of use in harsh edge or industrial environments, instead of within complex, power hungry climate cabinets.


With these processors, state-of-the-art cloud server performance has arrived at the industrial edge. This brings new capabilities and higher throughput at lower total costs because local operation reduces latency. However, edge implementation is not without challenges. OEMs must implement these 200–400 Watt TDP server processors in an industrial-grade manner. Their systems must also withstand industrial temperature ranges, shock, vibration, and high electromagnetic interference. Standard server designs for climate-controlled rooms are unsuitable for such environments. Luckily, industrially hardened systems are available off-the- shelf. An example is the SKY industrial server family from Advantech. It supports numerous AMD EPYC Embedded 7003 processors and is available as ready-to-use rack servers for many applications.


Application-ready edge and infrastructure servers


The 2U rackmount server SKY-7260S is designed for server racks. It comes equipped with hot- swappable hard disks with up to 200 TB storage capacity. It also offers 2 TB of memory and slots for GPGPU and FPGA accelerators, making it suitable for smart city, retail, and medical technology applications. The shallower SKY- 8260S model with a depth of 20.4 inches suits carrier applications and is also recommended for space-constrained industrial racks. The servers are available in numerous variants with a mix of PCIe x16 and x8 expansion slots. This also provides flexibility for optimal industrial expansion. The SWA-6080 server is optimised for industrial networking applications. It provides numerous switches and up to 100 GbE connectivity on the front panel, integrates an IPSec gateway, and supports DPDK L2/ L3 forwarding. OpenSSL is provided through integration of the Advantech PCIe QAT card, and the in-house diagnostic manager provides comprehensive support for OEMs, system integrators, and operators.


A lot of groundwork has already gone into application-ready solution platforms that OEMs can also purchase with custom housing. However, designing a full-custom server requires extensive customisation options and expertise, which not every industrial server supplier can provide. After all, this requires taking full responsibility for the complete system as ideally, the board, integrated mechanics and housing should all come from a single source. This is the only way to obtain a truly custom-fit design from one provider.


The AMD EPYC Embedded 7003 processors outperform comparable competitive solutions in numerous benchmarks.


Design and manufacturing of custom solutions


As one of the world’s most comprehensive design and manufacturing service providers for industrial servers, Advantech specialises in this task. The advantage for OEMs is that the systems offered are already fully certified products, drastically reducing NRE costs compared to designing systems themselves. With the availability of such pre-certified systems, OEMs can then determine the optimal path forward through requirements engineering to arrive at a customised, ready- to-use product, which is manufactured and delivered to their specifications. For instance, by omitting unnecessary external and internal interfaces, the integrated motherboards, which are also available without housings, can be adapted to customer requirements with relatively little effort. This reduces costs in series production and increases system security, as unused interfaces cannot be misused for data theft. For example, the four rear USB I/O interfaces on the AIMB592 Micro-ATX motherboard with IMPI 2.0 support could be removed if not needed. If the management console will only be accessed via GbE, even more front-side USBs could be eliminated along with unnecessary PCIe slots, VGA, and RS-232. Advantech can implement such custom variants in quantities as low as a few hundred.


Individual motherboard designs vs COM and carrier board solutions


Things get more complex when the PCB design itself needs modification, but Advantech also supports this option. Depending on the required changes and production quantities, it is necessary to evaluate whether to create a new customised


Micro-ATX board or to opt for a Computer- on-Module based design with carrier board. With the new COM-HPC Server standard, solutions like the SOM-E780 already support 79 PCIe Gen 4 lanes for custom peripherals and interfaces. With carrier boards requiring fewer layers than motherboards, design tends to be less complex. Which of the solutions is the optimal fit needs evaluating during requirements engineering. It is a great plus if a manufacturer offers both options and can make a truly comparative quote. However, board adaptation alone does not produce a finished system. System expertise is also needed, for example to implement rugged M12 connectors for mobile offroad servers. Advantech’s Design & Manufacturing Services (DMS) can deliver all of this. Based in Advantech’s European competence and development center in southern Germany, DMS focuses on projects that standard servers cannot address. It primarily serves large OEMs and system integrators, significantly contributing to the success of this global embedded computing leader, which now has over 550 employees in Europe.


Hardware-related software support is also crucial


The DMS team’s core focus is developing dedicated embedded computing solutions for European customers in an efficient, customer- oriented manner. Services encompass custom design not just of boards and systems but also BIOS, firmware, and customer-specific OS images. The team further provides software programming for AMD-based Linux servers. Made-in-Europe product quality is central to Advantech’s closed-loop quality assurance process. Starting in the development stage, design quality is continuously monitored


FEBRUARY 2024 | ELECTRONICS FOR ENGINEERS 27


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