The three “superpowers” of industrial digitalization: Low power consumption, high performance, and hyperconnectivity

Today, all eyes are on the digitalization of industrial operations. At Computex 2024, one of the highlights of NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote speech was his explanation of how NVIDIA is helping clients digitize factories using artificial intelligence. According to reports, there are more than 10 million factories worldwide, valued at USD 46 trillion in total. Clearly, industrial digitization will shape the future of the manufacturing sector.

As big data and machine learning technologies continue to evolve, an increasing number of factories are utilizing these technological advances to complete the transformation of process flows. This revolution is known as Industry 4.0. Through these upgrades, more factories have already increased production efficiency, improved production quality, and reduced production costs. For example, Foxconn's Shenzhen Longhua factory was selected as an intelligent manufacturing “Lighthouse Factory" at the Davos World Economic Forum. While prioritizing the use of Industry 4.0 technologies, its lights-out project increased production efficiency by 30% and reduced inventory cycles by 15%.

Essentially, chips and devices are the key technologies that are enabling the digital revolution and driving industrial digitalization. As a technology distributor and solution provider, Avnet focuses on three major areas to accelerate the implementation of Industry 4.0. in the industrial digital transformation. These three technological trends are: low power consumption, high performance, and connectivity. They are of vital importance to the successful realization of digitalization and machine learning.
 

Low power consumption: High-efficiency edge computing

Be it for the digital transformation of factories or machine learning, a large amount of data is required, most of which comes from edge devices. The majority of edge devices, however, need to be extremely compact in size, and some even battery-powered. Low power consumption is therefore one of the key requirements for sustainable data generation.

For starters, low power consumption extends device life. Low-power devices generate less heat, reducing the need for cooling systems and increasing the life of the device. Low-power technology is particularly important for the sensors, controllers and embedded systems that are used extensively in industrial environments.

Low power consumption also reduces energy costs. The significantly reduced energy consumption of low-power devices thereby lowers operating costs. For industrial systems that operate around the clock, the cost advantages brought by energy savings are especially obvious.

Finally, low power consumption enhances system stability. Since low-power devices generate less heat, there are fewer system failures caused by overheating, thus improving system stability and reliability.

Avnet partner NXP's MCX A-series MCUs feature scalable device options, low power consumption and smart peripherals, making them ideal for a wide range of application scenarios.

As a general-purpose MCU based on Arm Cortex-M33, the MCX A series has a main frequency of up to 96MHz, high integration and excellent analog performance. The low-power cache has built-in RAM self-test hardware, which improves system performance and supports a wide range of security applications.

MCX A comes with a series of low-power smart peripherals, including timers and 4Msps 12-bit ADC. The timer can generate three sets of complementary PWM signals with dead-time insertion, while the 4Msps 12-bit ADC enables hardware windowing and averaging. The innovative power architecture offers efficient utilization of I/O and saves power consumption using a simple power supply circuit that is compactly designed. MCX A supports a greater number of GPIO pins, enabling easier connection to external devices and thus allowing designers to choose smaller packages, simplify board design and reduce system BOM costs.
 

High-performance processing: A powerful brain

High-performance processing plays a critical role in industrial operations. High-performance computing power is the basis for large-scale and complex data processing and instant decision-making, thereby improving system efficiency and response speed.

Real-time data processing enables high-performance processors and accelerators to process massive amounts of real-time data for supporting complex machine learning and data analysis algorithms. This is crucial for real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance and smart control systems.

High-performance processing technology can also speed up data processing and decision-making on the production line, improving production efficiency. For example, in automated production lines, high-performance computing can enable rapid fault detection and troubleshooting, thus reducing downtime.

Furthermore, high-performance technology supports complex industrial applications such as computer vision, deep learning and advanced data analytics. These technologies play an important role in improving production quality, optimizing process flows and enhancing safety.

Embedded vision, for example, can play a key role in multiple market sectors such as industrial manufacturing, smart security, and self-driving. It is also an important field of application for machine learning.

With Avnet's UltraZed-EV starter kit, developers can start developing embedded vision applications immediately. This kit combines the new UltraZed-EV System Module (SOM) with an integrated circuit board to create a complete system for prototyping and evaluating embedded vision processing systems. In particular, Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC integrates a feature-rich 64-bit quad-core or dual-core ARM Cortex-A53 and dual-core ARM Cortex-R5 processing system, as well as programmable logic. It is therefore able to accommodate the various performance and real-time requirements of embedded vision, and the need for flexibility.

Connectivity: A rich nervous system

Connection technology plays the crucial role of bridging in industrial digital transformation. Centralized data management and processing is achieved by connecting devices and systems to the cloud, thus enhancing the intelligence and collaborative capabilities of the system.

As the amount of data increases, connection technology becomes increasingly important.

In industrial applications, connection technology must have features such as low latency, high reliability, scalability, and edge support. For example, 10Base-T1, a new connection protocol that has recently become popular, transmits data and energy conveniently through Single Pair Ethernet (SPE) while also supporting TSN. Through Ethernet, OT and IT can also achieve better network transmission unification and integration.

In view of the increasing importance of connection technology, Avnet has partnered ON Semiconductor, Microchip and other companies to launch transceivers for 10Base-T1. These devices can use standard Ethernet technology without the need for a gateway, thus reducing application costs and optimizing the use of existing Ethernet ecology.

Conclusion

The three major technological trends of low power consumption, high performance and connectivity play a crucial role in the digital transformation of industrial operations. Low-power technology reduces operating costs by reducing energy consumption and extending equipment life. High-performance technology improves production efficiency and system reliability by enhancing data processing capabilities and response speed. And, connection technology augments the intelligence and collaborative capabilities of the system by connecting data.

The application of these three key technologies helps industrial enterprises meet the challenges of digital transformation, enhancing their competitiveness and ability to innovate.

In the current market, however, there is a significant gap between the manufacturing of just wafers and complete production lines. Hence industrial enterprises need to strategically select the right partners in order to reap the full benefits of implementation in the shortest possible time. Their choice of suppliers across the full life cycle, from R&D to mass production, maintenance, supply chain and logistics, will play a critical role in their future success.

Over the years, Avnet has helped countless innovators turn great ideas into great products. At any stage of the process, our professional team of engineers is able to help our partners integrate ideas and resources into a single, managed environment. Through our products and services, we are ultimately able to bridge the gap between hardware, software and the cloud.