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July 1999


Industrial Computers: From Auto-Assembly Lines To Phone And Internet Lines

BY RON GROEN

TURNING POINT OF COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY
Ten years ago, CTI applications were non-PC-based. Most network service providers had their own versions of proprietary equipment, running applications on closed computer systems. With these user unfriendly systems, the process of integrating computer and telephone systems with data networks was often difficult, expensive, time-consuming, and required diversified skills and tools.

But today, closed systems used in telecom (and more recently Internet) OEM applications are starting to go the way of the rotary phone and Apple II computer. Proprietary systems, which were once leading-edge technologies, are slowly being replaced by open computing platforms. According to Natural MicroSystems,   high-availability technologies — specifically CompactPCI and hot swap — are enabling the migration of telecommunications infrastructure equipment from proprietary hardware and software architectures to mass-market PC hardware and industry-standard software operating systems like Windows NT.

This trend is most evident in the Open Source for Open Telecom initiative recently endorsed by the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG), a consortium of more than 450 industrial computer product vendors. This group collaboratively develops specifications for PCI-based systems and boards for use in industrial and telecommunications computing applications. The initiative they endorse is aimed at providing the public, in source code form, the hot-swap software infrastructure for CompactPCI and the software for telecom circuit switching and resource management using the CT Bus (H.100/H.110), specified in PICMG’s CompactPCI Computer Telephony Specification.

PICMG  is paving the way for industry computers used in datacom equipment. Previously used in monitoring systems for utilities and industrial plants, semiconductor thermal processing machines, seismic data acquisition, processing and interpretation systems, and much more, the industrial computer is becoming the ideal choice for Internet/telecom OEM equipment applications for several reasons.

Ruggedized Hardware
From a design perspective, industrial computers are an ideal fit (no pun intended) for the datacom OEM market. Most of the design features found in industrial chassis, backplanes, and single board computers (SBCs) match the needs of today’s OEM applications. For example, the industrial computer chassis rackmount design fits into a standard 19" cabinet used within the datacom market. Other chassis are available in benchmount, tower, and rackmount configurations. Industrial computer chassis have many physical attributes, including a metal front panel; ruggedized design (which can withstand adverse heat, shock, and vibrations); redundant power supplies; cooling; load sharing; hot-swappable/hot-pluggable, compliant, passive backplanes, fans, power supplies, and media; and front-accessible peripherals — all of which are needed in datacom equipment.

Features found in industrial SBCs which mirror Internet/telecom equipment requirements include front or rear I/O access; PCI/ISA BUS-compatible; dual, universal serial bus (USB); Intel Celeron processor speeds of 300, 366, or 400 MHz; system management functionality compliant with IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface); and more.

Product longevity and durability are other benefits for industrial PCs used in datacom applications — unlike other industries, where the PC technology is often obsolete in a couple of years after being designed. The industrial computer market offers products designed for the long haul with an average life span of up to five years. What this means is Internet and telecom OEMs can rest assured that the industrial computer products that they are utilizing today will be available in the future. How many people do you know who bought a PC a few years ago that is now nothing more than glorified paperweight?

In addition, mass production of a product cuts down on quality. Industrial computers are often built with more durable — and often more expensive — components with higher mean time between failure (MTBF) levels than computers used in the commercial market. What this means is greater uptime for the end user.

Bandwidth
As Moore’s law — which states that the pace of technology change is such that the amount of data storage that a microchip can hold doubles every year, or at least every 18 months — became a reality in the computer market, so did the demand for higher bandwidth applications. These include diagnostic imaging equipment that processed conventional and digital X-ray, computed tomography, magnetic resonance, and ultrasound applications. The need for high-bandwidth applications has also carried over to the equipment for high-speed Internet, intranet, extranet, e-commerce, and streaming (audio or video) applications through high-speed access technologies including asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC), wireless local loop (WLL), and satellite.

BUY, DON’T BUILD
Consideration of pricing for development and design of proprietary systems is another factor, which has led to the growth of the industrial computer in the datacom market. Why build a proprietary system, when you can buy an open industrial system (from a growing list of manufacturers) for less money? If companies like Lucent , Alcatel , and Nortel Networks could build proprietary computer systems for the same price they pay for industrial PCs, they would do so. With lowered development costs attributed to open systems, OEMs can design software around computers — and NOT design computers around the software. What this means is OEMs can standardize computers and reallocate their engineering resources to new software developments, thus focusing on their core competencies.

Another benefit the industrial computer provides the Internet/telecom market is the continuous availability (up to 99.999 percent of the time) operation of the equipment. This differs for fault-tolerant, proprietary systems, which use redundant hardware and software to provide non-stop operations. By maximizing the availability of systems and applications through decreased downtime during scheduled maintenance work and unexpected system failures, industrial computers can just about guarantee an Internet server, switch, or router will be operational.

SYSTEM MANAGEMENT
One final driving force of the industrial computer is its system management interface, found in the intelligent platform management interface (IPMI). Using the I2C BUS, IPMI is the common interface of intelligent hardware that is used to monitor several physical characteristics of the hardware (in this case the Internet server, platform, etc.), including temperature, voltage, fans, power supplies, and chassis. These monitoring abilities provide information that enables system management, recovery, and asset tracking that help drive down the total cost of ownership (costs outside of the initial software and hardware of maintaining a system) for network service providers — and thus, reducing downtime.

According to Intel Corp., “IPMI specifications give IT managers access to platform management information and control features that allow more accurate prediction of hardware failures, diagnoses of hardware problems, and initiation of recovery actions.” IPMI allows IXCs, ISPs, ITSPs, etc., to determine the health of their equipment, whether it is running normally or it is in a non-operational mode. Equipment based on IPMI uses intelligent or autonomous hardware that remains operational even when the processor is down, so the platform management information is always available to the IT manager.

IPMI interfaces enable telecom equipment to be accessed not only by management software, but also by third-party, emergency management add-in cards, and even other IPMI-enabled servers. This allows network service providers to gain flexible and interoperable access to vital platform management information. System-to-system monitoring or management via a connected server is becoming increasingly important as IT managers deploy complex system topologies such as clusters and rackmount configurations. In addition, the scalable nature of IPMI enables the architecture to be deployed across a server product line, from entry to high-end servers, and gives IT managers a consistent base of platform management functionality upon which to effectively manage their equipment.

According to industry sources, the telecommunications equipment market is a $150-billion market, with approximately 90 percent of the business built on proprietary hardware and software. This means there is a tremendous growth opportunity for companies willing to enter and succeed in this market. Ten years ago, who would have thought the industrial computer found in the automotive plants in Detroit would be connected so closely to the computers found in today’s Internet/telecom equipment?  The industrial computer — once at home on the auto-assembly line floor in manufacturing facilities in Detroit, is now finding a new home within the Internet/telecom (datacom) market. Whether it is being used as original equipment manufacturer (OEM) components in servers, switches, routers, or voice/data switches, today’s datacom OEMs are demanding the ruggedized hardware, price, bandwidth, availability, and system management previously only available in industrial computers.

Ron Groen is worldwide vice president, sales and marketing, for Texas Micro, Inc. Texas Micro is an ISO 9001-certified manufacturer specializing in the design, production, and integration of open system computing platforms for telecom, Internet, and industrial-specific applications, including imaging, data acquisition, industrial control, and network applications. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.texasmicro.com


Compatibility Testing Protects Customers And Suppliers

BY DON HOWELL

According to many experts, the Internet telephony market is expected to grow anywhere from 100 to 150 percent annually for the next five years, yielding tremendous market opportunities for VARs, integrators, and suppliers. Multimedia desktop PCs and high-availability industrial-strength models, either ISA or PCI running Windows NT or UNIX, will continue as hardware platforms of choice for the next several years. However, explosive market growth, combined with a lack of established standards, has created a risk environment for both suppliers and users of industrial computers and peripherals.

Understandably, the high cost of sales, low margins, faster time-to-market and other competitive pressures make it very unattractive, if not prohibitive, for industrial single-board computer suppliers to physically verify operation of their SBCs with all of the hardware peripherals and software for which they claim compatibility. Suppliers and users alike falsely assume that, because an SBC works with some popular programs and peripherals, it must work with them all.

Users can raise the odds of interoperability by buying all of their system elements from the same source — however, this is not always possible. Another way to ensure compatibility is to require that the supplier provide test reports, performance benchmarks, or other empirical data to support any such compatibility claims. For the supplier, compatibility verification testing may be accomplished either through an in-house self-certification program, or by outsourcing the job to an independent test lab.

INTEROPERABILITY TESTING
Let’s first consider in-house programs. The self-certification process begins at the breadboard/prototype stage, and continues through internal beta sites that effectively isolate most basic operational compatibility problems among processors, chipsets, BIOS, peripheral controllers, operating systems, and more.
Standardized SBC diagnostic tests of COM ports, LPT ports, onboard controllers, IDE, and floppy controllers are used to verify that everything is performing correctly. Read and write tests verify that various hard drives work with all the various operating systems, from DOS and Windows NT to SCO UNIX.

Despite such seemingly thorough procedures, sometimes a deeper level of investigation is needed to isolate the root cause(s) of an embedded compatibility problem. Eighty to 90 percent of SBC compatibility problems are usually traceable to the BIOS, and are then corrected by the original supplier, and reinstalled.

Once an SBC supplier reaches a certain sales plateau, the economies tip in favor of performing much or all of the compatibility testing program in-house, which allows greater control over the types of hardware and software that can be tested. It also allows quicker response to customers, both large and small. But for suppliers who simply cannot support the resources needed to develop, operate, and maintain a viable in-house compatibility certification program, subcontracting the job to an independent testing lab is another way to get similar results.
Fewer than half a dozen independent testing laboratories specialize in this area, and for a supplier, the price of admission can be quite high — often $50,000 or more to certify a single SBC series. One such independent testing laboratory based in Los Angeles, CA offers a complete test regimen that takes the interactive hardware and software compatibility issue as far down the road as the client wishes to go.

The product certification process ends with the award of a silver, gold, or platinum seal representing good, better, or best ratings for demonstrated compatibility with currently available hardware and software products within the client company’s target markets. For example, the mid-range rating might certify compatibility of the tested product with at least 80 percent of the available products with which it could be conceivably used. Though expensive, what makes this proposition attractive to the supplier is the probability of increased sales that will result from certified compatibility with literally hundreds of commonly available hardware and software products.

The various test phases of a mid-range-level compatibility certification, for example, include a large representative sample of currently available hardware and software products, laid out in a very structured, organized testing environment, such as:

Phase 1: Operating System Software Testing.
Phase 2: Hardware Peripherals Testing.
Phase 3: Hardware Interoperability Testing.
Phase 4: Software Testing.
Phase 5: Network Testing.
Phase 6: Performance Benchmark Testing.

CONCLUSION
The old adage that you get what you pay for certainly applies to the industrial SBC market. The annoyance of pulling a board out of the box, installing all the hardware and software, and then having it not start up, is not unusual with untested boards. For the supplier, contracting an independent testing laboratory, or doing all of the testing in-house, may seem “too large” an investment for a fledgling company. In reality, it is a fraction of the cost of taking a high-performance SBC to market in the first place. In the final analysis, how does the supplier or user benefit if the product doesn’t work?

From the user’s standpoint, the compatibility problem is slowly improving as more SBC manufacturers build products in compliance with industry standards, such as those defined by the 350-member PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG). In the absence of more objective data, users are encouraged to look for PICMG-compliance as a good indication of probable compatibility among industrial PC hardware, software, and peripherals.

Don Howell is a compatibility testing supervisor for Industrial Computer Source. Founded in 1985, Industrial Computer Source manufactures and stocks PC platform solutions supporting Intel processors and compatible operating systems. The company specializes in rackmount computers, chassis and enclosures, single board computers, and custom and ruggedized computers and chassis. Products are targeted for IP telephony, telecommunications, voice processing, broadcasting/convergence, medical, and industrial automation industries. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.indcompsrc.com







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