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AMD EMBEDDED SOLUTIONS GUIDE

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ics and CPU performance provided by these

processors may not be suitable for the latest

generation of integrated automation panels.

e ability to scale to accommodate large

screens at HD-caliber resolutions and addi-

tional management and control capabilities

is elusive at best for this class of processors.

is issue is considerably more pronounced

for HMI devices and panels that utilize video

and/or 3D graphics, the latter of which is

becoming increasingly popular as a means

to achieve 360 degree precision visualization

for process automation. It is for this reason

that HMI panel designers are increasingly

seeking out processing platforms that sup-

port OpenGL, the multi-platform API for

hardware-accelerated 3D graphics rendering.

Video and 3D support also helps to fa-

cilitate consistent and accurate industrial sys-

tem maintenance by minimally or untrained

personnel, but these beneﬁts are more easily

achieved if the video and 3D graphics perfor-

mance is stable and reliable. Video and 3D

graphics that seize up in mid-operation can

be frustrating at best and counterproductive

at worst for users at every experience level.

APUs Powering Space and

Power Efficient Mobile HMI

Devices

With the aforementioned considerations

in mind, APUs are a compelling option for

distributed HMI systems that incorporate

a diverse range of graphics-intensive hand-

held portable devices and high-performance

ﬁxed-installation panels throughout the fac-

tory ﬂoor. Oﬀering x86 compatibility and

the ability to scale from low-end portable to

high-end system support in the same small

physical footprint, APUs can help provide

consistent, high-speed graphics processing—

including video and 3D—at performance-

per-watt ratios optimized to support power-

sensitive, handheld portable HMI devices.

rough the combination of a general-

purpose CPU and discrete-class GPU on

a single die with a high-speed bus archi-

tecture and shared, low-latency memory

model, APUs can oﬄoad computation-

intensive pixel data processing from the

CPU to the GPU. Liberated from this task,

the CPU can serve I/O requests with much

lower latency, thereby helping to improve

real-time processing performance to levels

that may exceed the capabilities of con-

ventional processor architectures in many

cases. e APU’s two-chip architecture—

the APU and the companion controller

hub and fully integrated SOCs on their

way—also naturally help to simplify design

complexity through a reduction in embed-

ded board layers, helping to enable HMI

device designers to achieve aggressive form

factor goals for greater device mobility.

e performance-per-watt gains enabled

by some APUs ensure low power consumption

and low heat dissipation, which can preclude

the need for fan cooling within portable hand-

held HMI devices, and thus help to preserve

board space, improve overall system reliability

and limit system noise. With average power

as low as 2.3 watts and thermal design power

(TDP) proﬁles from 4.5W to 18W, AMD

Embedded G-Series APUs, for example, can

help equip HMI system designers to utilize

highly compact system enclosures for portable

handheld devices, and can help enable these

designers to stay within the threshold at which

passive cooling is an acceptable and typically

favorable option. Passively cooled, ventless

systems are the ideal end goal for portable

HMI devices distributed throughout a harsh

factory ﬂoor environment.

With the additional versatility to ap-

ply the integrated GPU for high-speed vec-

tor processing and/or graphics processing

as needed, HMI system designers utiliz-

ing APUs can better target both embedded

headless designs and graphics-driven systems

with a single processing platform. Overall,

APUs can help provide a single, scalable plat-

form that helps balance space savings, power

consumption and cooling eﬃciencies with

high-performance graphics capabilities to

help provide consistent support for handheld

portable HMI devices and high-end, ﬁxed-

installation HMI panels alike.

Hardware Virtualization

and Multi-Screen

Another important consideration for

developers selecting the underlying em-

bedded processing platform for their single

processing platform designs is support for

hardware virtualization. is enables mul-

tiple operating systems and their applica-

tions to run simultaneously, and indepen-

dently, on the same processor for the pur-

poses of enabling workload consolidation

and the separation of functions. Support

for hardware virtualization eﬃciently fa-

cilitates the integration of separate systems

on the factory ﬂoor.

For its graphical elements and ease of

programming, Microsoft’s Windows is the

dominant operating system in HMI appli-

cations. However, for real-time operation,

reliability and safety in control applica-

tions, real-time operating systems (RTOSs)

such as Integrity from Green Hills Soft-

ware are preferred. Virtualization enables

Windows to run alongside deterministic

real-time operating systems for HMI sys-

tems used in machine and process control

applications on the same processor. And

by accelerating the virtualization on the

hardware, it helps to prevent the processing

overhead of the virtualization from impact-

ing the user interface or, more importantly,

the real-time operation. e ability to use

such virtualization to combine the func-

tions of the process control with the mobile

operator panel results in a system architec-

ture that can be scaled for ﬁxed or mobile

HMI operations (Figure 2).

Multi-display capabilities are emerg-

ing as another important consideration

for HMI system designers when selecting

the underlying processing platform. With

multi-display ﬂexibility, a single proces-

sor could power the main screen as well as

companion screens that could display man-

ufacturing line data or analytic data from

other systems distributed throughout the

factory ﬂoor, for example. Multi-display

capabilities can also facilitate panoramic

display conﬁgurations for “wraparound”

HMI panels and/or massive multi-panel

overhead displays for long-distance view-

ing across the factory ﬂoor.

Be it a single-screen, handheld por-

table HMI device or centralized multi-

screen HMI panel installation, consistent

and compatible high-performance graphics

are paramount to system scalability and

user-intuitive operation in industrial auto-

mation applications. APUs can help elimi-

nate the need to bifurcate the underlying

processing platform to accommodate these

two types of systems, helping to enable de-

sign and operation eﬃciencies via a uniﬁed

embedded hardware architecture.

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