How next-gen Xeon and Core processors from Intel can power Industry 4.0

Pushing forward the ongoing Industry 4.0 transformation in the manufacturing and industrial sectors requires innovative technology with unprecedented capabilities. In addition to automating or monitoring operations, enterprises are quickly incorporating AI, analytics, and other dynamic workloads that require breakthrough compute power.?

AI use in particular is growing quickly: 35 percent of companies reported using it as of 2022, with another 42 percent of businesses saying they are exploring AI use. Having processors that work in real time to run AI workloads or monitor production equipment and make automated decisions about quality control, production rates, and more is increasingly critical. The latest generations of Intel processors, including 13th Gen Intel? Core? mobile processors and 4th Gen Intel? Xeon? Scalable processors, are designed for these demands. It’s one of the ways Intel is helping manufacturers and other industrial enterprises to deploy digital technologies that make operations more efficient, more capable of identifying bottlenecks or problems, and more flexible to meet changing demands.?

Why you need the ability to handle heavy workloads??

From punch cards guiding loom movements in the 19th century to the first numerical control devices in the 1940s, using technology to control production is far from a recent development. But for decades, industrial machines often used computer controls to direct mostly simple actions. That is changing rapidly as enterprises see how AI at the edge can dramatically change how they operate. Adopting these advanced digital technologies requires advanced hardware with proven compute capabilities to manage AI, industrial control systems, and IT support.?

With that in mind, our 13th Gen Intel? Core? processors take advantage of the performance hybrid architecture first introduced with the 12th Gen Intel? Core? processor family. The performance hybrid architecture and Intel? Thread Director optimize performance across edge use cases. Built-in Intel? Iris? Xe graphics support dynamic visual experiences, while also bringing AI inferencing capabilities to applications constrained by power and/or space limitations.?

Some versions of these 13th Gen processors offer features such as Real Time and Extended Temperature support for industrial applications. Additionally, select mobile processors are compliant with industrial conditions of 100-percent operation over 10 years, with extended temperature ranges of -40 Celsius (-40 Fahrenheit) to 100 Celsius (212 Fahrenheit) to help ensure reliability in the harshest environments. Finally, this generation of processors offers support for Intel? Time-Coordinated Computing (Intel? TCC) and discrete, Time-Sensitive Networking-capable 2.5GbE connectivity to help synchronize latency-bounded workloads.??

BirminD, an industrial optimization laboratory owned by WEG that provides advanced analytics solutions, is using 13th Gen mobile processors to improve its customers' manufacturing efficiency and performance. With the mobile processors’ compact size and faster inferencing speeds, BirminD has found they can augment many more PID controllers than earlier processors.?

“BirminD has been actively developing on 13th Gen Intel Core i7 processors, and so far, we have seen an average of 7.3 times improvement in inferencing speed compared to our solution based on the Intel Celeron J4005 processor,” says BirminD CEO Diego Mariano. “With this performance in the same compact form factor, we can now scale 70 times more PID controllers in a single edge AI system, allowing us to leverage our customers' growth in the Industry 4.0 agenda.”?

Using Intel Xeon Scalable processors to deliver more?

As with the 13th Gen Intel? Core? processors, the new 4th Gen Intel? Xeon? Scalable processors can handle demanding workloads, with built-in accelerators to deliver faster AI training, inferencing capabilities, and optimizing analytics performance. They also offer increased memory bandwidth and better support for more PCIe devices than ever before. Specifically optimized for low-latency network connections and edge workloads, the Intel Xeon processors achieve performance and power efficiency advantages over previous processors.?

The Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions accelerate AI capabilities for machine vision, defect detection, quality inspection, and other uses. On top of that, the Intel Data Streaming Accelerator improves the performance of applications reliant on data movement. Built-in Intel Speed Select technology also helps operators to select optimal performance for the most crucial tasks among multiple virtual machine (VM) workloads.?

With these performance capabilities, Siemens is using 4th Gen Intel? Xeon? Scalable processors for IoT in its SIMATIC IPC RS-717A scalable 1U rack server platform. This Siemens solution is optimized for challenging environments and provides the flexibility to support more use cases, more virtualization, and more sensors at the industrial edge.?

Faster performance at the edge??

The new generations of Intel scalable and mobile processors are built on a foundation of technologies supporting IT needs, while raising the bar for the compute power enterprises can utilize when setting up AI, IoT, and other systems at the edge. Advanced Intel processors already are powering solutions, with the advantage of allowing more cameras to be deployed per processor than other systems. This is a crucial advantage in real-time defect-detection solutions that use machine vision to improve quality or solutions that monitor equipment and production lines.?

Faster, more powerful processing at the edge also makes it easier to run digital twins, automated controls and processes, and other solutions in data-heavy fields, such as robotics and avionics. With this more dynamic processing power, businesses can create new opportunities, stay ahead of potential problems, and improve their responsiveness and experiences for employees and customers. The performance and integrated accelerators in our advanced processors also excel in data science, model training, and deep learning tasks.??

As 5G infrastructure and connectivity become a new standard in industrial uses and settings, our processors are ready. Virtual radio access network (vRAN) acceleration is integrated into the 4th Gen Intel Xeon? Scalable processor to help operators deliver cloud-native features for 5G core and edge networks. Intel already has demonstrated this processor can enable 1 Tbps (terabits per second) of performance for the 5G User Plane Function within a single dual-socket server.??

Learn more about our next-gen processors?

The digital solutions that are transforming operations in manufacturing and other sectors aren’t possible without high-performance compute power. The 13th Gen Intel? Core? mobile processors and 4th Gen Intel? Xeon? Scalable processors provide that as well as built-in resiliency and efficiency to work in a variety of devices and settings.?

Discover more about our 13th Gen Intel? Core? mobile processors and 4th Gen Intel? Xeon? Scalable processors and how they can drive your AI at the edge solutions to solve varied challenges. You also can explore our ecosystem of partners who are using these processors in solutions designed for a variety of industries and use cases.?