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Most high end rackmount industrial computers today are based upon PICMG compliant ‘SBCs (Single Board Computers)’ and ‘Backplanes’. This architecture provides excellent expansion capabilities with a product life of at least five years. Today, a typical 4U rackmount SBC based industrial computer would be *PICMG 1.3 compliant, providing PCI express (PCIe) expansion, using an Intel Core 2 Duo LGA775 processor and have a high quality industrial grade PSU (Power Supply Unit). It would also be electroplated for long term protection against corrosion. (*PICMG, PCI Industrial Computers Manufacturers Group, is a collection of over 450 companies collaborating to develop a standard high performance specifications for industrial computing and telecommunications applications).
In the industrial computing rackmount environment, there has been the recent introduction of ‘Workstation’ systems with key differentiators from standard industrial computers being: an integrated sliding keyboard with trackball and two mouse buttons, and a flat multimedia 7” TFT LCD with up to 800 x 480 resolution. These systems efficiently utilise 4U height in a 19” rack and eliminate the need for an externally connected keyboard, mouse and monitor. These ‘Workstations’ are ideal for space critical applications. There is an increasing demand for Workstation systems in the video surveillance and security automation industry.
In order to optimise space usage in video processing applications, the use of embedded computers is now common. Embedded computers are application specific computers designed to run ‘Real-time’ operating systems. They are usually a lot smaller in size when compared to a standard 19” rackmount computer. Hence, improving on performance, energy consumption and space optimisation which are key in today’s ever increasingly demanding applications.
With the introduction of the new Microsoft operating system, Windows Vista, and new the Intel processors, Core 2 Duo and Quad-Core processors, one message is clear. There is a need to improve on or increase computer processing performance without compromising the energy efficiency, system size or density, system cooling and cost of ownership. Intel Core 2 Duo processors boast of an increase in performance and a simultaneous decrease in power consumption. Microsoft Windows Vista and Intel Core 2 Duo and Quad-Core processors are 64-bit based. The 64-bit technology is designed to improve on the performance of demanding applications such as audio, image and video transfer. Limiting factors today are that 32-bit based computers can execute limited number of applications at any given time, hence is not fast enough. The main improvement with 64-bit processing is that more than one application can be executed simultaneously. Sound, image and mostly video encoding and decoding will benefit from this great improvements. However, it is worth noting that drivers will have to be re-written as 32-bit drivers existing today will not be able to fully capitalise on benefits of the 64-bit based computer system architecture.
In industrial rackmount computers, we have seen trends in expansion by peripheral card interfaces transition from the ISA (Industry Standard Architecture, 8-bit and 16-bit at 8MHz) to PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect, 32-bit at 33.33MHz), PCI-X (Peripheral Component Interconnect Extended, 64-bit at 133MHz) and now PCI Express (full duplex 64-bit at 8GB/s in each direction). Most new Gigabit Ethernet chips, wireless (802.11) chips and high end graphics cards now use PCI Express. Once again we note the increase in speed and capacity of data transferred.
With regards to the computer system memory, SIMMs (Single in-line Memory, 32-bit) where initially used. However, as computer processors now use a 64-bit width, this requires the use of SIMMs in pairs. Hence, DIMM (Dual in-line Memory module, 64-bit) was created to replace SIMMs and eliminate the need for pairing. Servers using DDR2 667 or 800MHz can have a total memory capacity of up to 8GB (four channels of 2GB modules). The next generation of server memory technology, FB-DIMM (Fully Buffered DIMM) is designed to increase reliability, speed and density when compared to the current modules. This memory architecture is designed to increase memory capacity by twenty-four times over from 8GB to 192GB. This will use up to 6 memory channels of 8 dual-rank memory modules.
Computer Hard Disk Drives, in order to cope with the system performance requirements have increased cache sizes (up to 16MB) and increased revolutions (up to 7.2K or even 10K RPM). However, the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) or reliability is not compromised.
In data communications or computer networking, Ethernet is a high bandwidth multi-purpose communication protocol that has become the De facto standard for home and office networking. In the late 1990s, ‘Industrial Ethernet’ products began to serve the data communications requirements of industrial and telecommunications customers, replacing or supplementing legacy Fieldbus protocols such as Modbus or Profibus. The target audience were those involved in control and automation tasks in the utility, oil & gas, process control, factory automation and transportation markets, including the rail industry. The proliferation of PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers) with Ethernet ports has helped to drive the widespread adoption of Industrial Ethernet in many markets. As Ethernet emerges as the protocol of choice for industrial applications, the requirement to get transferred using an Ethernet network from various sources has become increasingly important.
In the telecommunications environment data transfer technologies have evolved from SMS (Short Message Service) to GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications, 2G) to GPRS (General Packet Radio Service, 2.5G) and now to UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System, 3G) and Super G.
Trends indicate data communications or transfer mechanisms are going ‘Wireless’. A main advantage of wireless communication is the fact that it provides a suitable, and in most situations, more practical alternative to network cabling. There has been a constant emergence of bandwidth hungry applications for Wireless LAN (Local Area Networks) and most existing network standards are unable to cope with application requirements. Hence, new enhancements have been designed to provide improved bandwidth performance of up to and exceeding 60Mbps still using existing TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocols / Internet Protocols).
Wireless device servers are an excellent new way to wirelessly network existing serial (RS232, RS422 & RS485) devices. Capitalising on the success of the Serial-to-Ethernet converter and employing a similar technology, the wireless device server uses 802.11b/g wireless LAN to connect serial devices to an IP network ‘without wires’. There are two main modes for wireless data transfer: The Ad-hoc allows a pair of wireless device servers to be used to transmit serial data point-to-point; The Infrastructure mode uses a wireless access point as a gateway to the wired LAN and allows point-to-multipoint connections on the wireless side. A great advantage of infrastructure mode is that the wireless device server's serial ports can be configured to appear as a COM port in a remote PC allowing seamless integration with existing application software.
Trends of computing systems in today’s industrial environments indicate there is a need for an increase in performance and space optimisation without compromising cost of application implementation and system ownership. |
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