COM-HPC™ Taking Standardized Coms to the Next Level CONTENTS
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WHITE PAPER COM-HPC™ Taking Standardized COMs to the next level CONTENTS COM Express® FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH // 4 COM Express® 7: ENABLING // 4 IIOT HPC EDGE SERVER ENVIRONMENTS WHY COM-HPC™? // 5 COM-HPC™: // 5 FOR HIGH-END EMBEDDED HPC APPLICATIONS COM-HPC™: KEY HIGHLIGHTS // 6 THE FUTURE OF EMBEDDED HPC: // 7 COMe TYPE 7 & COM-HPC™ KONTRON: VALUE ADDED // 8 SUMMARY // 9 WHITE PAPER // www.kontron.com // 2 The long-established COM Express® standard for Computer- on-Modules (COM) will soon be joined by a new High Performance Computing standard. This is currently being finalized by the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG®). Why is this necessary and what does it mean for the widely adopted COM Express®? EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Enabling more powerful and sophisticated embedded 400 Pin Connector Heiß ersehnt - neuer servers and client devices for High Performance Computing Computer on (HPC) applications is a constant challenge for the embed- ded computing industry. In 2017 this led the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG®) to introduce its 400400 Pin Pin Pin Connector Connector Connector 400 Pin Connector COM Express® Type 7 standard. Kontron was fast to market with its first COMe Type 7 multicore processor embedded solutions, supporting powerful data analysis and real-time processing for edge server platforms. 400400 Pin Pin Pin Connector Connector Connector However, the embedded computing industry must always be ready to anticipate and respond quickly to the challeng- es of future technologies and applications. These are being driven by the industrial internet of things (IIoT), some of which are already starting to make an impact: artificial intelligence, autonomous driving and 5G wireless will COM Express® create enormous data volumes and require unprecedented basic computing power and greater connectivity. At the same time, totally new design concepts for embedded comput- COM Express® ers are urgently required as existing standards will no compact longer be sufficient to cope. In response to these growing high performance computing // Taking Standardized COMs to the next level requirements, a new working group was set up last year as part of the PICMG® standardization committee. This is to ensure the COM standard remains fit-for-purpose in the future. As a member of PICMG®, Kontron has been a driving influencer of the COM Express® standard since its inception. The company continues to be deeply involved in new developments, ensuring the standard’s continued success and evolution. Therefore, Kontron is currently collaborating on a new highly specific High Performance Computing standard which will be complementary to COM Express® while taking the proven concept of standardized COMs to a whole new level. This whitepaper considers the work that Kontron and other leading manufacturers are undertaking in order to deliver the new complementary COM Express® standard later this year: Computer-On-Modules High Performance Computing (COM-HPC™). In addition to reviewing the background to this initiative and highlighting the forthcoming standard’s key features, the future implications for COM Express® are also discussed. WHITE PAPER // www.kontron.com // 3 COM Express®: FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH In addition, following its introduction three years ago in The many advantages of adopting COMs for building revision 3.0 of the COM Express® specification, COM embedded applications are widely understood and Express® Type 7 has been increasingly deployed by accepted by system developers. Compared to full developers - in the rapidly emerging market for IIoT high custom designs, they can offer a faster, more flexible performance edge servers. and scalable approach. COMs can be deployed as quickly as off-the shelf motherboards and have the benefit of making future processor upgrades much easier. COM Express® TYPE 7: ENABLING IIOT HPC EDGE SERVER ENVIRONMENTS The industry demand for COMs has therefore risen Type 7, derived from Type 6 and therefore complementary, dramatically over the last 20 years. This has been mainly offers unprecedented scalability, performance and driven and dominated by the success of standardized connectivity all on one platform. The Type 6 pinout was COMs due to the industry’s ongoing initiatives to ensure partially modified with the deletion of all audio and the availability of standardized modules. These have graphics interfaces since these are largely superfluous provided designers with the peace of mind of clear tech- in edge-based IIoT environments; retaining only four of nology roadmaps, long-term availability of modules in the eight USB 2.0 ports; keeping just two instead of all specific format factor sizes, and wide-ranging accesso- four SATA ports. Therefore, by replacing graphics ries. Furthermore, standardized COMs from multiple support with multiple 10 GbE-KR ports and defining 32 vendors has eliminated reliance on single vendors which PCIe lanes, Type 7 is intended for the design of has stimulated healthy market competition and pricing. server-grade HPC platforms used for applications requesting high data and network throughput. Released in 2005 by the PICMG® COM Express® is the most adopted COM standard worldwide with a two- Com Express Type 6 Com Express Type 7 thirds market share and an expected CAGR of around Gigabit Ethernet Gigabit Ethernet 15 % over the next years. Standardized modules are USB 3.0 0-3 USB 3.0 0-3 LPC LPC / eSPI pro vided to cover a wide range of target applications SATA 0-1 through defined module Types. These have specific pin SATA 0-3 PCIe 6,7 PCIe 6,7 out configurations and feature sets on one or two PCIe 14,15 220-pin connectors. The various module sizes allow HDA Reserved 10GBase KR 0-3 considerable flexibility and choice, depending on the USB 2.0 0-3 DDI 0-2 intended application, while still maintaining compatibility USB 2.0 0-7 within each module Type. PCIe 12,13 PCIe 0-5 PCIe 0-5 Over the years, COM Express® has become popular for LVDS / eDP PCIe 8-11 PCIe 16-31 use in many kinds of embedded computing applications, VGA PEG NC-SI such as those found in the Industrial Automation, Defense and Transportation sectors. SPI & I2C SPI & I2C Today, the standard includes the Mini (84 x 55 mm), SER 0-1 SER 0-1 Compact (95 x 95 mm) and Basic (125 x 95 mm) form Power Power Power Power factors with Types 6, 7 and 10 pin outs. COM Express® Type 6 vs Type 7 COM Express® Type 6 continues to address many embedded client needs by offering a broad range of I/O Features: interfaces for graphics, Digital Display Interfaces 4x 10 GBaseKR Ethernet (DisplayPort, HDMI, LVDS or eDP) and super-fast USB 3.1. NC-SI It is therefore equipped to serve many different kinds of 32x PCI Express® lanes application requirements across various market 2x SATA seg ments. This has been helped by embedded solutions 4x USB 3.0 / 2.0 manufacturers offering essential applications pre-inte- grated on carrier boards as well as custom interfaces. Removed: All necessary functionality is therefore easily available DDI 0-2 at single board level. COM Express® Type 6 also offers SATA 2-3 wide scalability with compact and basic size form AC97 / HDA Audio factors and proven ability to use processors with a TDP VGA (thermal design power) of 50 watts or more. LVDS / eDP WHITE PAPER // www.kontron.com // 4 WHY COM-HPC™? COM-HPC™: FOR HIGH-END EMBEDDED HPC The impact of the IIoT is rapidly taking embedded APPLICATIONS computing to a whole new level. In Industrial Automa- The new COM-HPC™ standard will provide five new form tion, for example, exponential amounts of data are being factor modules designated A, B, C, D and E. produced from sensors, devices and actuators, often requiring local pre-processing at the edge. Similarly, in the Communications sector the advent of 5G wireless 400 Pin Connector will increasingly generate huge data backhaul traffic volumes and processing requirements. At the same time, autonomous vehicles, factory floor 400 Pin Connector and HPC workloads will demand server-class proces- sors for supporting much higher-end platforms. Many of Size E (200x160mm) Size these scenarios no longer take place in a protected D (160x160mm) Size high-performance computing data center or in the cloud, but close to where the data originates: on mobile masts, on production lines, in warehouses, at processing plants or in autonomous vehicles. I/O data throughput and Size A A (95x120mm) Size Size C (160x120mm) Size Size B (120x120mm) Size communications performance is also growing signifi- cantly. Consider for example, the quantum leap from the original Gbit/s speeds achieved by PCIe in 2003 to the 400400 Pin Pin Pin Connector Connector Connector current 32 Gbit/s of the latest PCIe Gen 5; the arrival of 100 Gigabit Ethernet and USB 4.0; and the ability of // Defined Sizes remote manageability right down to embedded units. COM-HPC™/Client COM-HPC™/Server Therefore, developers will soon require standardized high performance COMs which go beyond the limits and A, B, C SIZE D, E capabilities of COM Express® and other COM standards. 48 + 1 PCIe 64 + 1 A new standard is necessary which - although comple- 2 MPI-CSI - mentary - is also distinct from COM Express®. It must 2 25 GbE KR 8 directly address the new demands and support the need 3 DDI - for future-proofed compute, scalability, transmission, and network performance. 2 SoundWire, I²C - 2 10GBASE-T 1 4 USB4 2 HPC DESIGN REQUIREMENTS: - USB 3.2 2 4 USB 2.0 4 Data analysis and real-time 2 SATA 2 processing on a single platform 2 UART 2 High scalability 1, 2 eSPI, SPI 1, 2 Faster networking capabilities Powerful multicore processing 1, 2 SMB / I²C 1, 2 Reliability, Availability, Manageability 12 GPIO 12 Robust design for harsh environments Provide security of IIoT edge software // Supported Interfaces applications Long term availability – secured upgrade path COM-HPC™/Client Sizes A, B, and C relate to three embedded COM-HPC™/ Client modules for use in high-end embedded applica- tions.