February 2014
8
C
OVER
S
TORY
be done either through OpenJDK or LuaVM. By providing the connectivity
and security, we give developers a head start for getting to market faster.
The rest is the developer’s domain, where their expertise comes into play.”
Q:
How do Intel® processors help solve interoperability and security issues?
A:
“IDP is optimized to run on Intel® processors. This enables us to tap
into the scalability of Intel® architecture to address a wide range of use
cases, as well as to make use of unique capabilities of Intel® silicon. Some
applications require low-cost, low-power chips. The Intel® Quark SoC
X1000 addresses that market. Some applications require more compute
power. The Intel® Atom™ processor E3800 product family meets those
needs. On the roadmap, we have plans to extend this intelligent gateway
platform all the way to boards based on Intel® Core™ processors, and
perhaps even Intel® Xeon® processors. In addition, there are important
manageability and security features. An example of leveraging the capa-
bilities of Intel silicon is secure boot, which provides a hardware-based
root of trust that is essential to a secure end-to-end secure solution.”
Q:
Why did you integrate McAfee solutions into IDP?
A:
“Using multiple layers is a best practice in security. By integrating
McAfee Embedded Control into IDP, we’re able to add advanced
whitelisting capabilities. This means that even if a hacker manages to
penetrate physical barriers, circumvent various integrity checks, and
get malware installed on a gateway device, McAfee Embedded Control
will prevent it from actually executing and causing any damage.”
Q:
Which industries will benefit most from your solution?
A:
“IDP is a very generic solution—any industry can benefit from it.
That said, our initial focus will be industrial control, mass transit, and
energy. These industries represent large volume sales and need our se-
curity and safety features. Other industries can benefit as well. In retail
there are enormous numbers of unconnected electronic cash registers
and other point-of-sale (POS) devices. In countries with a sales tax, the
most efficient method of ensuring compliance is connection back to a
tax authority’s central computer through a secure, intelligent gateway.
There’s already interest in IDP to provide that.”
Dr. Tom Bradicich, R
&
D Fellow and
Corporate Officer, National Instruments
Q:
What are the challenges of harvesting
the Big Data generated by the IoT?
A:
“Analog is the oldest, fastest, and biggest
among all other types of big data. Analog
data can be as big and fast as 40TB a
second during high energy physics experi-
ments, to many terabytes accumulated over
days in monitoring generators or power
grids. Harnessing this analog data presents
special challenges. Data acquisition can be
geographically dispersed; the data can be voluminous; and, all the accu-
mulated data must be digitized. In addition, accurate and timely analog-
to-digital (A/D) conversion presents engineers with a trade-off of speed
(sample frequency) versus accuracy (sample bit sizes). Finding the right
tradeoff, coupled with the requirement to pre-process the data in the
data acquisition nodes, requires sophisticated instruments.”
Q:
How is National Instruments addressing the issues?
A:
“National Instruments (NI) is developing solutions for these challenges
through an end-to-end strategy that stretches from sensors to the cloud.
Along with key partners, we are facilitating complete solutions incorporating
key solution ingredients, such as NI PXI and NI CompactRIO data
acquisition and analysis systems, along with design, engineering analytics,
and visualization software, such as NI LabVIEW and NI DIAdem. The in-
gredients of these solutions are portioned into three tiers. At the very edge
of the IoT are the Tier 1 sensors, which capture the analog data. The PXI or
CompactRIOnetworked systemnodes in Tier 2 facilitate the A/D conversion
and process early analytics and visualization. The data then flows into Tier
3, traditional IT infrastructures, usually hitting a network switch or router
first, and then into servers and workstations for further analytics.”
Q:
What role do Intel® technologies play in these solutions?
A:
“Intel products are key ingredients in both Tier 2 and 3 of this solution.
PXI and CompactRIO systems are controlled by a PC or a custom
embedded control module powered by an Intel® Atom™ processor or
Intel Core processor. The compute power of these processors is essential
to system performance in running complex NI software. For example, NI
LabVIEW performs in-motion and early life analytics and visualization.
Its development and runtime environment works with NI software
libraries that include signal processing, image processing, and waveform
signal analysis. NI DIAdem software enables viewing synchronized mixed
signal data, historical trends, and comparing multiple data sets. Both PXI
and CompactRIO systems depend on Intel® components for data analytics,
data management, and systems management. In fact, Intel processors
provide vital RASM (reliability, availability, serviceability, andmanageability)
functions, such as Intel® Active Management Technology (Intel® AMT)
for remote monitoring, remediation and repair, and Intel® Trusted
The Edge
Acquire
DataFlow:
Real-Time
InMotion
EarlyLife
AtRest
Archive
Sensors/Actuators
IT Infrastructure
(Big Data
Analytics, Data Bases)
Corporate/
FederatedIT
System Nodes
(Data Acquisition, Analysis,
Control, Monitoring, Test)
NIHardwareandFPGAFirmware
NISoftware
Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3
EdgeIt
(Local,Remote,Cloud)
National Instruments’ three-tier solution for integrating big analog
data into the Internet of Things.
Connecting sensors and other devices to IDP-enabled intelligent gate-
ways enables nearly instant secure connectivity through a wide variety
of protocols.
