AHEAD Optio reference architecture powers complex AI systems on the edge, resulting in faster time to value.

A profusion of AI acceleration technologies has hit the market over the last few years, and developers are looking to deploy them at the edge. The AHEAD Optio 2U platform, utilizing the NVIDIA IGX Orin 700, empowers application developers to achieve the performance, durability, security, and safety features needed for AI at the edge. This platform is perfect for low-latency video applications. Its key hardware specifications include 2x 100Gb NVIDIA ConnectX-7 NICs, a 12-core Arm® CPU, and 2,048 NVIDIA Ampere architecture GPUs, making the Optio 2U an excellent alternative to traditional x86 edge platforms.

The AHEAD L100 2U platform, powered by NVIDIA IGX, enables organizations to adopt a software-defined model, eliminating the need to piece together hardware components for AI applications. This streamlined approach accelerates development speed and reduces costs. The platform supports the NVIDIA Metropolis, NVIDIA Holoscan, and NVIDIA Isaac SDKs, which are designed to expedite the creation of AI applications and AI-enabled devices and robots.

NVIDIA IGX Orin is a powerful, enterprise-ready AI platform for industrial and healthcare edge environments, combining industrial-grade hardware with enterprise-level software and support for edge AI management.

AHEAD is a member of the NVIDIA Partner Network.

Bringing AI Applications to Life

AHEAD has an entire team of hardware engineers devoted to helping application developers and IT solution providers bring their AI applications to life. Using the NVIDIA AI Enterprise-IGX software stack, we combine pre-trained software models with our pre-configured hardware building blocks to get clients about 80% of the way to a working solution, with the remaining 20% to be customized for the application.

To that end, AHEAD has designed the Optio Series of customizable reference hardware for organizations looking to deploy a complete edge AI solution. These building blocks are architected in a variety of form factors, such as rackmount servers, network-attached workstations, or embedded systems intended to operate within other machines and devices.

For example, AHEAD’s Optio L100 2U form factor leverages NVIDIA IGX Orin and comes with a range of I/Os and compute power. This customizable design features 248 tera operations per second (TOPS) of AI performance, the capability to add an optional dGPU to boost AI processing up to 1,705 TOPS, and an NVIDIA ConnectX®-7 smart network interface card for high-speed network connectivity at up to 100 gigabits per second (Gb/s), precision timing, and advanced security. It also incorporates 12-core Arm Cortex processors, BMC manageability, 64 GB 256-bit LPDDR5 memory, and 2,048-core 64 NVIDIA Ampere architecture Tensor Core GPUs, plus variable PCIe slots, I/O expansion, and power supply. The platform supports variable PCIe slots, I/O expansion, and the ability to add 2x add-in-cards in a 2U form factor (1 double-width and 1 single-width), ensuring maximum flexibility and performance.

Key Edge AI Use Cases

Here is a selection of applications that are ideal for edge AI building blocks from AHEAD, powered by NVIDIA IGX.

Industrial Automation

• Robotics: Enables robots to make decisions in real time, improving their efficiency and effectiveness, as well as helping them learn from their experiences and adapt to changing environments.
• Equipment operations: Optimizes equipment operations by analyzing data from sensors and making real-time adjustments to improve performance.
• Inspection for quality control: Analyzes images and other data to detect defects and ensure that products meet quality standards.
• Predictive maintenance: Helps predict when equipment is likely to fail, allowing maintenance to be scheduled before problems occur, reducing downtime, and improving overall efficiency.

Safety & Security

• Site safety: Analyzes data from cameras and sensors in real time to detect potential hazards and alert workers or management to take preventive measures.
• PPE detection: Detects if workers are wearing the required personal protective equipment (PPE) and alerts them if they are not.
• Barrier breaches: Detects if a barrier has been breached and alerts security personnel to act.
• Collision detection: Analyzes data from sensors on vehicles and machinery to detect potential collisions and alert operators to take preventive measures.
• Field inspection: Analyzes data from drones or other sensors to inspect remote or hard-to-reach areas, reducing the need for human inspectors to enter potentially hazardous environments.

Healthcare

• Genomics: Helps analyze large genomic datasets, identify patterns and relationships that can improve our understanding of genetic diseases, and aid in the development of personalized medicine.
• Robotic Surgery: Enhances the precision and accuracy of robotic surgery by giving real-time visualization, reducing the risk of complications and improving patient outcomes.
• Diagnostic Imaging: Improves the speed and accuracy of diagnostic imaging, helping to identify diseases earlier and with greater precision while reducing the workload of clinicians.
• Patient Monitoring: Enhances patient monitoring by providing real-time analysis of patient data, identifying potential health issues before they become serious, and enabling early intervention.

At COMPUTEX 2024, NVIDIA displayed the low-latency capabilities of NVIDIA IGX using NVIDIA Holoscan Sensor Bridge to enable easy sensor-based application development with low-latency Ethernet protocol.

Also, AHEAD partner Advantech showcased the power of IGX with a computer vision endoscopy application combined with a generative AI LLM (large language model) chatbot. LLMs, best suited for text-based tasks, can interact with VLMs (vision language models), which create the ability to perceive and understand the real world using computer vision. The demo showed how a care team can interact with the chatbot during surgeries to obtain value-added insights from the camera’s visual findings.

Full-Service AI Platform Design & Deployment from AHEAD

As an industry leader in AI platforms, AHEAD provides guidance for applying AI in the right areas for the right use cases, and selecting, designing, and configuring the optimal AI platform for clients.

But what’s most unique about AHEAD’s offering is that we in-source all hardware/software integration. We perform configuration, test, and verification in AHEAD facilities, handle any industry certification requirements, and manage inventory and global logistics into 185+ countries. We also integrate networking and infrastructure equipment in our facilities to create a robust digital foundation for an organization’s modernization journey.

Reach out to AHEAD to learn how we can accelerate your journey to AI. AHEAD enables you to confidently scale your AI efforts through our data science and engineering expertise, AI strategy and governance frameworks, and AI security policies and controls. We construct custom AI infrastructure across cloud, core, and edge that aligns with your AI workloads and business goals.