Showing posts with label ARM compilers. Show all posts
At the World Robot Conference 2016, which ran from Friday to Tuesday in a southern suburb of Beijing, some companies complained that the event is unlikely to help them due to the overheated market. Manufacturers looking to automate have had a hard time finding workers to operate their robots, and the industry is still struggling with how to better integrate operation systems. The frenzy in China's robotics market is cooling, and people are raising more practical questions about how to best implement robotics in manufacturing.
Beijing-based Yaskawa Shougang Robot Co showcases its industrial robots at the World Robot Conference 2016 in Beijing. Photo: Chen Qingqing/GT
On
a chilly Friday afternoon, dozens of attendees at the World Robot Conference
2016 in suburban Beijing gathered around an industrial robotic arm
demonstrating its delicate grip and wide range of motion.
The
six-axis robotic arm can be used in a wide range of applications such as
assembly, dispensing, materials handling and packaging.
"I
am not surprised by the progress these exhibitors have made in automation. I
know many Chinese factories are equipped with industrial robots to increase
efficiency," an attendee surnamed Zhang told the Global Times on Friday at
the conference, which ended on Tuesday.
China
has been considered a growth market for industrial robots over the last few
years, Vitaly Nedelskiy, president of the Russian Association of Robotics, said
at the conference on Friday.
China's
supply of industrial robots grew by a robust 17 percent in 2015, Nedelskiy
noted. Companies installed 68,000 robots last year, though the ratio of robots
to workers remains far below the global average.
Globally,
the average ratio of robots to workers, known in the industry as robot density,
stood at 69 installed robots for every 10,000 employees in 2015, according to
the International Federation of Robotics (IFR).
By
comparison, China's average robot density is about 49 robots per 10,000
workers, Nedelskiy noted.
Under
its "Made in China 2025" or China's "Industry 4.0," the
Chinese government has set a target for China to have 150 robots per 10,000
workers by 2020.
To
achieve the goal, the country's industrial enterprises would have to add
600,000 to 650,000 industrial robots by the end of the decade, according to the
IFR.
Because
the government is encouraging Chinese manufacturers to install more automated
machinery and robots to boost efficiency, about 3,400 companies around the
country are now engaged in the robotics business, domestic industry news site
robot.ofweek.com reported in May.
However,
the development of China's robotics industry has been uneven and the market has
grown overheated, leaving major challenges that need to be addressed, industry
experts said during the conference.
Men
and machines
Despite
the rapid growth of China's robotics industry, which had about 20 percent of
the domestic market share in 2015, the country lacks workers trained to run the
machines, said Qu Daokui, president of Shenyang SIASUN Robot & Automation
Co. The lack of workers is one of the major issues many Chinese factories are
facing today.
With
the government so clearly behind the robotics industry, factories have jumped
to acquire automated machinery. The city of Dongguan, South China's Guangdong
Province, often referred to as "the world's factory," has adopted a
strategy called "Robotics-powered Smart Manufacturing" to improve the
productivity of local manufacturers.
There
are nearly 200 robot manufacturers in Dongguan, according to a document the
local government sent to the Global Times in February. So far, 400 factories
have been equipped with a total of 10,000 robots.
Although
they have the robots, they still need people to operate them, said Qu, whose
company acquired a German vocational training institution in February.
"More
and more factories are asking us to teach them how to use [industrial robots],
instead of just installing them, which illustrates how important it is to
educate more skillful workers," Qu told the Global Times.
The
lack of trained workers has weighed on some small and medium-sized enterprises
(SMEs) in the Pearl River Delta, said an employee in charge of automation at an
original equipment manufacturer in Dongguan, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity. Dongguan is an industrial powerhouse in the Pearl River Delta
region.
The
situation also jeopardizes the government's goal of automating more of the
city's manufacturing industry.
"It's
hard to find sufficient skillful workers who can handle those machines, and
some factories only use automated machines when local officials visit their
production lines, and they go back to labor-intensive production after [the
officials] leave," the employee told the Global Times on Sunday.
The
factories benefit from the government subsidies they receive for rebranding
themselves as an "automated business," but few local SMEs actually
benefit from installing industrial robots, the employee said.
As
it turns out, operating a robot is a multidisciplinary task involving the
integration of software, hardware and core technologies, experts said.
A
lot of people just think "I'll buy a robot and place it and connect
it", but they end up with a lot of problems, said Oussama Khatib, director
of robotics laboratory at Stanford University.
Technology
and the future
For
those who focus on research and development (R&D) in the robotics sector,
more effort needs to be made to make the machine smarter by introducing more
advanced technologies, but China has a long way to go, industry representatives
said.
The
rise of China's robotics industry has encouraged a growing number of companies
to enter the field, but many of them don't bother with developing their own
core technology and stick to manufacturing low-end products, said Gan Zhongxue,
chief technology officer of the ENN Group.
"Some
elements like the RV reducer and controller are still produced by foreign
companies," he told the Global Times on Friday. An RV reducer, one of
reduction gears, is used for transmission and the controller is used for
controlling the machine.
Purchasing
those components from overseas raises the manufacturing costs for Chinese
robotics companies.
As
far as technological trends are concerned, companies will be concentrating on
the collaboration between humans and machines, simplified applications and
light-weight robots, the IFR said in its World Robotics Report 2016.
And
the demand for industrial robots will likewise be driven by a whole assortment
of factors, such as the handling of new materials, energy efficiency, and
better developed automation concepts, the report said.
For
now, a large part of industrial robots are operating under digital control
systems, but a more harmonized human-robot interaction requires greater
flexibility and autonomous operation in unstructured environments, which is
unlikely to be achieved for the moment, said Zuo Shiquan, head of the equipment
industry institute at the CCID Institute affiliated with the Ministry of
Industry and Information Technology.
"Although
the application of robots in China has expanded in recent years, the next step
ought to be to improve R&D, which will help keep us from falling behind our
foreign competitors," he told the Global Times.
By Chen Qingqing Source:Global Times Published: 2016/10/24 19:38:39
CHIPMAKER Intel's Altera unit has unveiled the Stratix 10, a quad-core FPGA that features a 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 with five times the density and twice the performance of Altera's previous generation Stratix V.
The Stratix 10 offers
70 per cent lower power consumption for the same performance and will be
produced on Intel's latest 14nm process technology.
The
device was unveiled by Dan McNamara, corporate vice president and general
manager of the Programmable Solutions Group (PSG) at Intel.
"Stratix
10 combines the benefits of Intel's 14nm tri-gate process technology with a
revolutionary new architecture called HyperFlex to uniquely meet the
performance demands of high-end compute and data-intensive applications ranging
from data centres, network infrastructure, cloud computing and radar and
imaging systems," he said.
The
device is intended for data centre applications and networking infrastructure,
and comes after Intel signed adeal in August with ARM to produce chips based on ARM's
intellectual property in Intel's most advanced chip production facilities.
The
arrangement came after Intel struck a deal in2013 to make 64-bit ARM chips for Altera when it was
designing the Stratix 10.
"FPGAs
are used in the data centre to accelerate the performance of large-scale data
systems. When used as a high-performance, multi-function accelerator in the
data centre, Stratix 10 FPGAs are capable of performing the acceleration and
high-performance networking capabilities," explained McNamara.
The
device is among the first new products that Intel will produce on its own fabs
that incorporate ARM microprocessor technology since offloading the Xscale
business to Marvell in 2006.
Intel
had acquired the Xscale business, then called StrongARM, after buying Digital
Equipment's semiconductor operations in the late 1990s.
Meanwhile,
Intel completed the acquisition ofAltera in December 2015, when CEO BrianKrzanich said: "We will apply Moore's Law to grow today's
FPGA business, and we'll invent new products that make amazing experiences of
the future possible - experiences like autonomous driving and machine
learning."
This
is not the first time that a chip design company has blended memory with
switching fabric. The Xilinx Zynq-7000 is an all-programmable SoC comprising
two 32-bit ARM Cortex-A9 cores, an FPGA and a number of controller cores to
handle Ethernet, USB and other controllers.
Intel-owned
Altera has produced a white paper explaining the technicalintricacies of the Stratix 10. µ
ARM
Holdings is currently preparing the Cortex-R52 application processor,
the follow up for the ARM Cortex-R5 chipset, which is already being used
in a number of safety-critical applications. The new generation
Cortex-R52 is set to be around 35% more powerful than the outgoing chip
design and has recorded 1.36 Automark per MHz on the EEMBC AutoBench
according to the Green Hills Compiler 2017, the highest reported
benchmark of the class. ARM’s Cortex-R52 is designed with many built-in
protections against random, design and software errors and is compliant
with ISO 26262 ASIL D and IEC 61508 SIL 3 safety standards. As part of
this, the chipset identifies an issue and is capable of performing
safety-critical tasks, such as bringing a vehicle to a stop, in the
event of a problem. The Cortex-R52 has the ability to reach a decision
based on circumstances and the information available. This means that
ARM’s new chip could potentially be used in autonomous vehicles, factory
product lines, power plants and medical equipment. The artificially
intelligent design will make it easier for an overall products to reach
the necessary safety standards and certification.
ARM’s
worldwide marketing and business development manager, Richard York, explains
that the kinds of products the Cortex-R52 is destined for can affect life, but
that the built-in decision making technology “…will make it much easier to do
increasingly complex software.” ARM’s new Cortex-R52 design uses the hardware
to separate software tasks, which is a means of ensuring safety-critical code
is kept isolated. This makes is considerably easier to debug code and makes use
of a software “hypervisor” to police the code running on the chip. Ultimately,
ARM’s new high performance design helps developers build safety-critical
applications and the first customer, STMicroelectronics, will be using the
Cortex-R52 as part of their “Smart Driving” vision. The Cortex-R52 will be put
to service in a number of ways including powertrain, chassis and ADAS (advanced
driver assistance systems). STMicroelectronics’ Automotive & Discrete group
vice president and Automotive Digital Division general manager, Fabio Marchiò,
explained that the Cortex-R52 is the best chip for task that must combine “safety
without loss of determinism.” Fabio also explained that the Cortex-R52’s
support for virtualization technology should lead to a streamlined integration
process. This should save manufacturers time and development costs.
There
is currently significant interest into the autonomous automobile sector as more
and more manufacturers are developing products and services for the industry.
Although it is the technology and automobile manufacturers that are getting
more of the limelight, it’s important to remember that behind these big brand
names there are a large number of supporting companies that are building the
tools necessary to enable tomorrow’s technology. It is not yet clear how
quickly we will see autonomous vehicles on the road as in addition to the
technology issues, there are significant legislative barriers: today’s road
laws were not designed with a machine being responsible for the vehicle rather
than a driver. With many different companies working on the end product, ARM
Holdings is clearly taking the view that, not unlike the California gold rush,
it is better to sell the underlying technologies to be used by the final
product, rather than the final product.
Here,
ARM Holdings appear to be well positioned for this. The company, which was
recently bought by SoftBank for around $31 billion, does not manufacturer their
own chips but instead license their designs to manufacturers. This very much
reduces the risk to the business of a failed automotive product. Both the manufacturer
and ARM work with developers to bring the product to market. Following the
SoftBank takeover, ARM may now have sufficient financial backing to allow the
company to expand its operations and design specialist chipsets for the
automotive markets. Although the new ARM Cortex-R52 will not be available in
devices until early 2018, this may be the first of a family of new products
designed for the automotive market.
