September 2016
6
E
mbedded
C
omputing
High Performance SoC Motherboards
for Responsive Computing
By Kanti Bhabuthmal,
Supermicro
This article introduces a highly dense
motherboard series with SoC (System
on Chip) which provide scale and
flexibility across low power and high
performance solutions for the edge.
It enables the suited computational
workloads for data analysis that span
across storage, communications and
security systems.
+
boards
& solutions
September 04/16
Combined Print Magazine for the European EmbeddedMarket
With exponential growth and innovation in
the worldwide IoT (Internet of Things) indus-
try, millions of smart edge devices are being
added every second. As a result, there is an
enormous growth in data generation, data
analytics and data storage requirements.There
is also a need to provide scalable and flexible
solutions to move, manage, analyze and store
this data at the edge with minimum tolerance
for latency. In most use cases, data needs to
be processed at the edge and response times
cannot suffer due to latency delays from mul-
tiple hops to and from data centers. Latency
is non-tolerant in many instances and back-
haul can impact both performance and cost
of moving data back and forth from the data
center. In most use cases real-time data anal-
ysis at the edge is important, while streaming
and batch processing of historical data for
in-depth analysis is more ideal in the cloud.
Massive amounts of historical data still need
to be parsed and analyzed. This can be done
at the cloud including storing and archiving
large data sets for future reference.
There are a few advantages of managing data
computation and decisions making at the
edge. The first are maximizing productivity by
managing industrial equipment and machin-
ery and optimizing efficiencies by minimizing
fuel consumption in the transportation indus-
try. Managing extreme conditions in a chem-
ical industrial plant and managing inventory
in a retail or grocery store chain as well as
managing logistics for the last mile delivery
of packages with routing algorithms based on
package addresses, concentration and traffic
conditions are other advantages. Managing
digital signage with real-time data in public
venues and large gatherings in Smart Cities
with digital surveillance for managing traffic,
parking and crime prevention complete the
advantages.
With the enormous growth of (IoT) data and
connected devices in mobile networks, car-
riers require a fully converged and scalable
high-performance solution at the intelligent
edge. Supermicro SoC solutions are helping
IoT platform providers address these edge
convergence needs by introducing a con-
verged yet scalable building block solution
with the new Supermicro X10SDV family of
embedded/server motherboard designs. New
sets of products based on Intel® Xeon® proces-
sor D SoC offer converged yet scalable solu-
tions that can efficiently manage workloads
at the edge. This enables data to be securely
managed, moved, analyzed and stored at the
edge and in the cloud. Designed expressly for
consolidating infrastructure at the intelligent
edge, these optimized solutions offer exciting
possibilities when paired with the latest Intel®
Xeon® processor D product family. The com-
bination brings new performance, density,
low power consumption, and cost savings to
a variety of compute, storage and networking
workloads.
Analyzing and processing of data by collecting,
inspecting and using data models with the
goal of decision making and discovering use-
ful information. SoC solutions at the edge pro-
vide the ability to quickly analyze data in real
time and provide intelligent feedback to smart
sensors locally to what is relevant. Cryp-
tographic systems are used for encryption
and decryption and to secure data for trans-
port and access authentication. SoC solutions
can act as edge managers for associating user
rights and restrictions with the established
identity by identity management and creating
security certificates. The systems can regulate
access to edge resources based on the roles of
individual users. In this context, access of an
individual user can be restricted to perform a
specific task, such as view, create, or modify
a file. These SoC solutions can offer data and
traffic management across multiple networks
with connectivity management or via secure
transport using Tunnel/VPN applications.
Dynamic data or transactional data are situ-
ated where information is constantly being
collected and can be stored locally for quick
access. Persistent data can be backhauled to
