nightmare. Te most challenging aspect of this nightmare for many industrial vision companies has been sourcing field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), according to Zebra Technologies’ vice president and general manager for machine vision, Donato Montanari. FPGAs are processors used in embedded systems that power high-performance, compact, industrial vision cameras. As the technology has been refined, they have been gaining favour as an image processor for industrial vision cameras in recent years.
‘Te fact that both the largest FPGA
suppliers had been acquired [Xilinx by AMD and Altera by Intel] and are still going through integration is yet another difficulty to add to this perfect storm,’ Montanari said. ‘Te availability of FPGAs, which translates into real new capacity coming online, is not going to happen until halfway through 2023.’ Another critical component in industrial
vision cameras is the CMOS image sensor. One of the lead providers is Sony – the same Sony that serves tens of millions of iPhones. For very specialised industrial-only components, the machine vision industry does get priority and shortage of those components is relatively manageable, said Montanari. Te problem is where there is overlap with consumer products like these CMOS sensors. ‘Tat’s where it gets really, really tough.’ Zebra Technologies has weathered the storm well. Designed for manufacturing
‘Te availability of FPGAs, which translates into new capacity coming online, is not going to happen until halfway through 2023’
and warehouse management applications, its VS-series smart cameras and FS-series industrial scanners were only introduced a year ago. ‘We made a very conscious decision that instead of an FPGA for our fixed industrial scanners and machine vision solutions we were going to use very advanced microcontrollers with a GPU on-chip,’ explained Montanari. Quite apart from the technological advantages in terms of deep learning and artificial intelligence this set-up has offered, it has also rather fortuitously meant Zebra has not had to compete with its peers for components. ‘We are not fighting for the usual Xilinx
FPGAs because our microcontrollers are actually built by NXP,’ added Montanari. ‘Demand has been through the roof and I think it’s a combination of our products being new and innovative, and the fact that our competitors are not able to supply.’ Another factor in Zebra’s recent
success has been the shrewd acquisition of Montreal-based smart camera manufacturer, Matrox Imaging. With the two companies’ product ranges sharing
g
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