Xilinx Customers Shape a Brilliant Future
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ISSUE 92, THIRD QUARTER 2015
V SPECIAL ISSUE V
Xilinx Customers 5G Wireless Brings
Ubiquitous Connectivity
Shape a Brilliant The Coming Revolution
in Vehicle Technology
Future
Machine Learning in the Cloud:
Deep Neural Networks on FPGAs
Power Fingerprinting
Cybersecurity Using Zynq SoCs
World’s First
Programmable City
Arises, Built on
Xilinx FPGAs 18
www.xilinx.com/xcell
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L E T T E R F R O M T H E P U B L I S H E R
Kudos to Customers—and to a
Xcell journal New Quarterly: Xcell Software Journal
PUBLISHER Mike Santarini
mike.santarini@xilinx.com
408-626-5981
W
elcome to this special issue of Xcell Journal celebrating the ways in which Xilinx cus-
EDITOR Jacqueline Damian tomers are enabling a new era of innovation in six key emerging markets:
vision/video, ADAS/autonomous vehicles, Industrial IoT, 5G, SDN/NFV and cloud
ART DIRECTOR Scott Blair computing. Each of these segments is bringing truly radical new products to our society. And
as the technologies advance over the next few years, the six sectors will converge into a net-
DESIGN/PRODUCTION Teie, Gelwicks & Associates
1-800-493-5551 work of networks that will bring about substantive changes in how we live our lives daily.
Vision systems are quickly becoming ubiquitous, having long since evolved beyond their initial
ADVERTISING SALES Judy Gelwicks niches in security, digital cameras and mobile devices. Likewise undergoing rapid and remarkable
1-800-493-5551
xcelladsales@aol.com
growth are advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), which are getting smarter and expanding
to enable vehicle-to-vehicle communications (V2V) for autonomous driving and vehicle-to-infra-
INTERNATIONAL Melissa Zhang, Asia Pacific structure (V2I) communications that will sync vehicles with smart transportation infrastructure to
melissa.zhang@xilinx.com coordinate traffic for an optimal flow through freeways and cities.
These smart vision systems, ADAS and infrastructure technologies form the fundamental
Christelle Moraga, Europe/
Middle East/Africa building blocks for emerging Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) markets like smart factories,
christelle.moraga@xilinx.com smart grids and smart cities—all of which will require an enormous amount of wired and wire-
less network horsepower to function. Cloud computing, 5G wireless and the twin technologies
Tomoko Suto, Japan of software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) will supply
tomoko@xilinx.com
much of this horsepower.
REPRINT ORDERS 1-800-493-5551 Converged, these emerging technologies will be much greater than the sum of their individual
parts. Their merger will ultimately enable smart cities and smart grids, more productive and more
profitable smart factories, and safer travel with autonomous driving.
Xilinx® customers have begun creating remarkable systems in all these market segments
with our 28-nanometer All Programmable FPGAs, SoCs and 3D ICs. Still on deck are even more
ingenious technologies destined to be built around our 20nm UltraScale™ and 16nm FinFET
UltraScale+™ technologies as Xilinx rolls out more of these devices over the course of the
next two years.
While Xilinx continues to innovate by increasing the sophistication and system functionality of
our devices, we are also constantly developing ways to enable more design teams to bring new
innovations to existing markets and to pioneer emerging markets.
To this end, in the last eight months Xilinx took a bold step forward by releasing three new
development environments in our SDx™ line (see cover story, Xcell Journal issue 91). The new
SDSoC™, SDAccel™ and SDNet™ offerings enable software engineers, system architects and
mathematicians (non-HDL, hardware design experts) to program the logic—not just the embedded
www.xilinx.com/xcell/
processors—in Xilinx All Programmable FPGAs and SoCs. The result is to dramatically speed up
software performance and create highly optimized designs with overall system performance per
Xilinx, Inc.
2100 Logic Drive
watt that can’t be replicated with any other semiconductor device.
San Jose, CA 95124-3400 In fact, I’m proud to announce that the company is expanding the charter of my small and
Phone: 408-559-7778
FAX: 408-879-4780
mighty team here at Xilinx to launch a sister publication to Xcell Journal. The new quarterly maga-
www.xilinx.com/xcell/ zine, called Xcell Software Journal, will roll out later this summer, focusing on high-level design entry
methods for software engineers, systems engineers and anyone else who is interested in using our
© 2015 Xilinx, Inc. All rights reserved. XILINX,
the Xilinx Logo, and other designated brands included
SDx development environments and high-level tools from Xilinx Alliance Program members.
herein are trademarks of Xilinx, Inc. All other trade- I hope you will enjoy reading this special issue of Xcell Journal celebrating our customers’
marks are the property of their respective owners.
efforts in these exciting new markets. We continue to welcome articles about your own experi-
The articles, information, and other materials included ences with Xilinx devices, and now you will have two venues for publication: Xcell Journal and our
in this issue are provided solely for the convenience of
our readers. Xilinx makes no warranties, express,
new quarterly, Xcell Software Journal.
implied, statutory, or otherwise, and accepts no liability
with respect to any such articles, information, or other
materials or their use, and any use thereof is solely at
the risk of the user. Any person or entity using such
information in any way releases and waives any claim
it might have against Xilinx for any loss, damage, or
expense caused thereby. Mike Santarini
Publisher
Need to Find Bugs in Your FPGA Design Faster? You can with Synplify Premier… Debug where you design in the RTL and integrate hardware fixes quickly with incremental synthesis Simulator-like visibility enables viewing signals from an operating FPGA at the target operating speed To learn more about how Synopsys FPGA design tools accelerate debug, visit: www.synopsys.com/fpga
C O N T E N T S VIEWPOINTS Letter from the Publisher Kudos to Customers— and to a New Quarterly: Xcell Software Journal… 4 Special Issue Xilinx Customers Shape a Brilliant Future 8
THIRD QUARTER 2015, ISSUE 92
XCELLENCE BY DESIGN APPLICATION FEATURES
Xcellence in Smart Cities
World’s First Programmable City Arises, Built on Xilinx FPGAs… 18
18
Xcellence in 5G Wireless Communications
5G Wireless Brings Ubiquitous Connectivity… 26
Xcellence in Industrial IoT
Innovative Platform-Based Design for the Industrial Internet of Things… 32
Xcellence in ADAS/Autonomous Vehicles
The Coming Revolution in Vehicle Technology and its BIG Implications… 38
Xcellence in Data Center Cloud Computing
38
Machine Learning in the Cloud: Deep Neural Networks on FPGAs… 46
Xcellence in SDN/NFV
All Programmable SDN Switch Speeds Network Function Virtualization… 52
Xcellence in Software-Defined Networking
Xilinx FPGAs Serve Performance SDN… 58
Xcellence in Cybersecurity
Implementing Power-Fingerprinting Cybersecurity Using Zynq SoCs… 64
26
XTRA READING
Xclamations! Share your wit and
wisdom by supplying a caption for
our wild and wacky artwork… 70
Excellence in Magazine & Journal Writing Excellence in Magazine & Journal Design
2010, 2011 2010, 2011, 2012
COVER STORY Xilinx Customers Shape a Brilliant Future by Mike Santarini Publisher, Xcell Journal Xilinx, Inc. mike.santarini@xilinx.com 8 Xcell Journal Third Quarter 2015
E
COVER STORY
Xilinx customers are leading
the way in the development
of today’s major emerging
market trends. Xilinx is
enabling this development with
All Programmable technologies
that deliver software intelligence
and hardware optimization.
Ever since Thomas Edison flipped the switch to pow-
er the first electric light, the pace of electronic indus-
try innovation has never let up. We now enjoy so many
remarkable electronic innovations that shape our dai-
ly lives that it’s easy to overlook the moment when a
true milestone in electronics is being reached. Today
we are fast approaching one of those milestones.
Six important emerging markets—video/vision, ADAS/
autonomous vehicles, Industrial Internet of Things, 5G
wireless, SDN/NFV and cloud computing—will soon
merge into an omni-interconnected network of networks
that will have a far-reaching impact on the world we live
in. This convergence of intelligent systems will enrich our
lives with smart products that are manufactured in smart
factories and driven to us safely in smart vehicles on the
streets of smart cities—all interconnected by smart wired
and wireless networks deploying services from the cloud.
Xilinx Inc.’s varied and brilliant customer base is
leveraging Xilinx® All Programmable devices and soft-
ware-defined solutions to make these new markets and
their convergence a reality.
Let’s examine each of these emerging markets and
take a look at how they are coming together to enrich
our world. Then we’ll take a closer look at how custom-
ers are leveraging Xilinx devices and software-defined
solutions to create smarter, connected and differentiat-
ed systems that in these emerging markets to shape a
brilliant future for us all (Figure 1).
IT STARTS WITH VISION
Vision systems are everywhere in today’s society. You
can find cameras with video capabilities in an ev-
er-growing number of electronic systems, from the
cheapest mobile phones to the most advanced surgi-
cal robots to military and commercial drones and un-
manned spacecraft exploring the universe. In concert,
Third Quarter 2015 Xcell Journal 9
COVER STORY
the supporting communications and units—a combination of cameras and alerting guards, homeowners or police
storage infrastructure is quickly shift- thermal, night-vision and radar sensors. of suspicious behavior.
ing gears from a focus on moving voice These fusion sensors can, in all weather The mainframe system can also gath-
and data to an obsession with fast video conditions, autonomously perform fa- er metadata to be stored, analyzed and
transfer. cial and object recognition, identify and cross-referenced at a later date by inte-
Just three decades ago, vision/vid- track erratic or suspicious activities and grated security centers. Companies can
eo systems were very crude by today’s even identify and track individuals—all use the data gleaned from their surveil-
standards. For example, the most so- in near-real time. Each unit in these sur- lance technology for purposes beyond
phisticated surveillance and security veillance systems will autonomously security. For example, retailers can
systems of the time primarily consist- capture visual or even thermal images, use the metadata to analyze customer
ed of a video camera (with poor reso- enhancing them through image-correc- browsing and buying habits to better
lution) connected by a coaxial cable tion algorithm computations, and even serve their clientele. They can also li-
to a monitor, which may or may not perform localized processing that can cense the metadata they have gathered
have been diligently overseen by a se- instantaneously analyze everything in to affiliates and product vendors to im-
curity guard or attendant. The camera its field of view. prove product marketing and sales.
may or may not have been linked to What’s more, these individual units As discussed in depth in the cover
a recording device that had a limited are often networked—by wire or story of Xcell Journal issue 83, this
number of hours to record what imag- wirelessly—into a mainframe system, smart vision/video technology is be-
es the camera captured. allowing all the points in the surveil- coming pervasive and is being lever-
By comparison, today’s most ad- lance system to work in concert to aged in a growing number of applica-
vanced surveillance systems are highly continuously track individuals in the tions. One of them, in the automotive
intelligent. They are composed of sophis- system’s field of vision while simulta- industry, is advanced driver assistance
ticated processing-driven, fusion-sensor neous recording their movements and systems (ADAS), a field that in turn
Figure 1 – Customers are leveraging Xilinx All Programmable solutions to create innovations for the emerging
markets of ADAS, Industrial IoT, video/vision, 5G wireless, SDN/VFV networks and cloud computing.
10 Xcell Journal Third Quarter 2015COVER STORY
Figure 2 – The sophistication of advanced driver assistance systems is rapidly evolving thanks in large part to
customers’ use of Xilinx’s Zynq-7000 All Programmable SoC devices to build fusion-sensor ADAS platforms.
is advancing via processing to enable detected an object behind the vehicle. on to take the next bold step and extend
autonomous vehicles. Advanced vi- The automotive industry has since en- lessons learned in ADAS technology to
sion technology is being further lever- hanced this technology greatly by fusing enable vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) com-
aged in smart factories, smart medical the radar sensor with rear-view cameras munications, vehicle-to-infrastructure
equipment, transportation infrastruc- and improving the algorithms to widen (V2I) communications and semi-auton-
ture and even in smart cities—all the sensor’s field of view. Now, these omous and ultimately autonomous ve-
emerging sectors of the Industrial In- rear-view sensor systems can more hicles, in which drivers will be able to
ternet of Things (IIoT) market. accurately track objects in the sensor merely copilot their vehicles. With these
array’s field of view and identify poten- technologies in place, there will pre-
ADAS’ DRIVE TO tially dangerous conditions. In the very sumably be fewer accidents. Moreover,
AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES highest-end vehicles, the sensor systems vehicles can be platooned on highways
If you own or have ridden in an automo- are fused and connected to the vehicle’s and traffic can run more efficiently,
bile built in the last decade, chances are central control unit to automatically which will cut down on fuel consump-
you have already experienced the value brake if the driver is distracted. tion. That, in turn, holds the potential to
of ADAS technology. Indeed, perhaps From the humble but effective be- mitigate fossil fuel pollution.
some of you wouldn’t be here to read ginnings of the rear-view camera, au- OEMs today are actively building and
this article if ADAS hadn’t advanced tomakers now offer ADAS systems even beginning to publicize their prog-
so rapidly. The aim of ADAS is to make with full 360-degree views around and ress in autonomous vehicles. Daimler
drivers more aware of their surround- even inside vehicles. Figure 2 displays subsidiary Freightliner, for example,
ings and thus better, safer drivers. the many types of ADAS systems on has received licensing in the state of
The very first of these ADAS tech- an automobile today, and shows how Nevada to operate its self-driving Inspi-
nologies was rear-view warning. The advanced processing and specialized ration Super Truck. Meanwhile, Mer-
earliest versions used a radar sensor algorithms have enabled a small num- cedes-Benz, Google, Audi and Tesla are
connected to an automobile’s central ber of relatively inexpensive sensors among the many companies that are
electronic control unit (ECU). When a to perform multiple tasks. actively striving to bring autonomous
driver placed the vehicle in reverse, the ADAS systems have proven so suc- vehicles to the mass market. It’s truly a
system sounded a warning if the sensor cessful and so reliable that the race is race. And the stakes are high.
Third Quarter 2015 Xcell Journal 11COVER STORY
The cyber-physical systems of Factory 4.0 will be impressive,
bringing varying degrees of artificial intelligence to the already smart
systems and enabling the factory equipment to be self-correcting
and self-healing, with autonomous operation. A robot in a factory
line will be able to detect if it is not running optimally.
The challenges for introducing fully and enabling some truly major, substan- maintenance and preorder parts that
autonomous vehicles involve ensuring tive advances in society. they’ll need to replace. In turn, they can
the vehicles are aware of their locations In Germany, the manufacturing sec- schedule factory downtime to perform
and their surroundings. They must be tor of Industrial IoT is seen as such a multiple repairs at once to increase fac-
able, in real time, to act accordingly as critical market that the government tory efficiency and productivity, and ul-
road conditions change second by sec- is actively sponsoring IIoT develop- timately to maximize profitability.
ond to ensure the safety of those in and ment. In a German government effort But the cyber-physical systems of
around the vehicle. How best to do this called Industry 4.0, companies are Factory 4.0 will be far more impressive,
given that not all vehicles on the road combining processing, sensor fusion bringing varying degrees of artificial in-
will have autonomous-driving capabili- and connectivity to create machine in- telligence to the already smart systems
ties is a question industry and govern- telligence for cyber-physical systems and enabling the factory equipment to
ments are debating. The answers will (CPS) for factories, hospitals and civ- be self-correcting and self-healing with
undoubtedly fall to safety standards for ic infrastructure. The result will be the autonomous operation. For example, a
smart communications between vehi- enabling of the fourth industrial revo- robot in a factory line will be able to de-
cles and more forward-looking commu- lution (Figure 3). German companies tect if it is not running optimally. It will
nications between vehicles and civic in- alone expect to spend $44 billion per run self-diagnostics to determine if a
frastructure. Advances in the emerging year on the CPS retooling, and coun- part is wearing out, and will even try to
realm of the Industrial IoT will help to tries like China, Taiwan and India—all reboot or adjust its motor performance
create this infrastructure. known for manufacturing—will need to delay system failure. The information
to follow suit to stay competitive. can be networked to the factory’s main-
IIOT’S EVOLUTION TO THE CPS designs employ smart architec- frame system to order new parts while
FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION tures equipped with fusion sensors sim- other robots work faster to ensure over-
The term Internet of Things has received ilar to those used in ADAS. The smart, all factory efficiency remains constant.
much hype and sensationalism over the fusion-sensor-based control units in The Industrial IoT market also in-
last 20 years—so much so that to many, today’s most advanced factories can cludes smart grids and smart transporta-
“IoT” conjures up images of a smart re- quickly spot defects in products as they tion that use the same any-to-any connec-
frigerator that notifies you when your whirl along assembly lines and remove tivity concepts of a smart factory but on a
milk supply is getting low and the wear- the faulty items. Factories use smart grander scale, extending automation and
able device that receives the “low-milk” control systems to create virtual bar- connectedness to the power grid and to
notification from your fridge while also riers that spot unsafe conditions for planes, trains, automobiles and shipping.
fielding texts, tracking your heart rate workers. Companies have networked Megacorporation General Electric, for ex-
and telling time. These are all nice-to- these sensors with the machines in the ample, is adding intelligent and connect-
have, convenience technologies. factory to shut down machinery instant- ed systems across the many industries it
But to a growing number of people, ly if a worker comes too close to dan- serves, including power grid, transporta-
IoT means a great deal more. In the last gerous parts of the equipment. tion, oil and gas, mining and water. In rail
couple of years, the industry has divid- Smart sensor systems of today also transportation, for instance, GE is outfit-
ed IoT into two segments: consumer monitor the wear of factory motors ting its locomotives with smart technol-
IoT for convenience technologies (such and parts. Sensors are networked with ogies to prevent accidents and monitor
as nifty wearables and smart refrigera- factory control centers and enterprise systems for wear for more accurate, pre-
tors), and Industrial IoT (IIoT), a bur- systems to help companies perform ventative and predictive maintenance.
geoning market opportunity addressing and optimally schedule equipment At the same time, GE is also diligently
12 Xcell Journal Third Quarter 2015COVER STORY
Figure 3 – Industry 4.0 is the evolution from embedded systems to cyber-physical systems that, through advanced processing,
enable smart manufacturing, infrastructure and cities. The result will likely be the world’s fourth industrial revolution.
building smart rail infrastructure equip- munications to create a truly connect- INTERCONNECTING EVERYTHING
ment that it has networked with its loco- ed, intelligent city. To do so, the Bristol TO EVERYTHING ELSE
motives. This allows railway operators Is Open project is heavily leveraging the In response to the need for better,
to efficiently run their lines and schedule newest, open, yet secure network topolo- more economical network topologies
maintenance accordingly to keep freight gies, enabling companies wishing to cre- that can efficiently and affordably ad-
and passengers moving efficiently, again ate solutions for smart cities to connect dress the explosion of data-based ser-
maximizing operator profitability. their networks to Bristol Is Open’s master vices required for online commerce
On an even grander scale, variations network. Hamburg, Chicago and Tokyo and entertainment as well as the many
of these smart-infrastructure technol- are among the many other municipalities emerging IIoT applications, the com-
ogies are now being integrated in the worldwide that are actively engaging in munications industry is rallying be-
IIoT market segment called smart cities, smart-city development. hind two related network topologies:
which is projected to be a $400 billion in- The emerging trends toward soft- software-defined networks and net-
dustry globally by 2020. As you will read ware-defined networking (SDN) and work function virtualization.
in a contributed article in this issue, the network function virtualization (NFV) in Traditional wired networks have
city of Bristol, England, is currently un- wired communications, along with the been based on fairly rigid and pro-
dertaking a project that offers a peek into advent of 5G wireless technologies, are prietary hardware with limited pro-
the cities of tomorrow. The project is in- seen as key to enabling further growth of grammability and versatility. SDN at-
tegrating disparate networks for city san- smart-city and other Industrial IoT mar- tempts to add greater flexibility into
itation and maintenance, traffic and grid ket sectors in this mass electronic-sys- network administration by decoupling
management, and emergency services tems convergence as network traffic the top-level control plane functions,
along with business and personal com- grows exponentially in the coming years. which decide where data will be sent,
Third Quarter 2015 Xcell Journal 13COVER STORY
from the lower-level data plane func- industry expects that by 2020, wireless SECURITY EVERYWHERE
tions such as routers and switches— networks will be connecting more than As systems from all of these emerging
the devices that actually forward data 50 billion devices worldwide. Among its smart markets converge and become
to the selected destination. A soft- many advantages over 4G, 5G promises massively interconnected and their
ware-programmable abstraction layer to increase end-user data rates by 10x to functionality becomes intertwined,
between the control and data planes 100x while decreasing download laten- there will be more entry points for
allows operators to provision new ap- cy fivefold. Further, these bandwidth nefarious individuals to do a greater
plications in software, prioritize and increases will enable more people and amount of harm affecting a greater
optimize where data is delivered in the businesses to use cloud-based services amount of infrastructure and greater
control plane and deliver that data on and storage. More companies will be number of people. The many compa-
existing proprietary hardware (or, with able to create virtual stores reaching nies actively participating in bringing
NFV added, via vendor-neutral hard- new customers worldwide, while con- these converging smart technologies
ware) that operators can scale with sumers will have the ability to store and to market realize the seriousness of
changing service requirements. access data anytime, anywhere. ensuring that all access points in their
NFV approaches enable companies In turn, data centers supporting products are secure. A smart nuclear
to further optimize data plane function- cloud-based business and storage reactor that can be accessed by a back-
The wireless industry expects that by 2020,
wireless networks will be connecting more than
50 billion devices worldwide. Among its many
advantages over 4G, 5G promises to increase
end-user data rates by 10x to 100x while
decreasing download latency fivefold.
ality. By virtualizing in software what demands will need to expand mas- door hack of a $100 consumer IoT de-
would typically be the job of very ex- sively to accommodate the daunt- vice is a major concern. Thus, security
pensive specialized hardware (routers ing amount of traffic facilitated by at all point points in the converging
and switches), NFV makes it possible 5G wireless networks and SDN/NFV network will become a top priority,
to run the software-derived virtualized wireline topologies. Today’s data even for systems that seemingly didn’t
functions on less expensive, more gen- centers are struggling to keep up require security in the past.
eral-purpose hardware (personal serv- with demand, while their power con-
ers and commercial data centers). NFV sumption is increasing exponentially. XILINX PRIMED TO ENABLE
enables network hardware resources Data centers now consume upwards CUSTOMER INNOVATION
to expand economically and, with SDN of 3 percent of the world’s electric Over the course of the last 30 years,
added, scale on demand and as needed power, while producing 200 million Xilinx’s customers have become the
as traffic loads increase and decrease metric tons of CO2. That enormous leaders and key innovators in all of
around the world. power consumption costs data cen- these markets. Where Xilinx has played
On the wireless communications ters more than $60 billion a year in a growing role in each generation of
front, 5G promises to reach new data electricity. With data center traffic the vision/video, ADAS, industrial, and
rate heights that will not only enable expected to reach 7.7 zettabytes an- wired and wireless communications
faster data downloads and streaming nually by 2017, it’s no wonder that segments, today its customers are plac-
video for handset users, but will also data center operators are looking ing Xilinx All Programmable FPGAs,
provide bandwidth increases that will for new hardware architectures to SoCs and 3D ICs at the core of the
facilitate the convergence of IIoT and increase performance while keeping smarter technologies they are develop-
smart-city applications. The wireless power consumption in check. ing in these emerging segments.
14 Xcell Journal Third Quarter 2015COVER STORY
Xilinx for smarter vision/video ing these innovations to consumers have ing secure and safe standards-compliant
With a rich history in space exploration, shortened, thanks in large part to the smart platforms with sensor fusion, smart
mil-aero and security systems, Xilinx has wide use of Xilinx All Programmable de- motion/motor control and smarter and
long served the market with sophisticat- vices. Xilinx devices made their debut in faster enterprise connectivity. These All
ed vision and video platforms as well as automotive infotainment systems but are Programmable platforms are the underly-
the intellectual property (IP) and meth- now making a definitive mark in ADAS. ing technology for smart wind farms com-
odologies to help customers build smart Today, Xilinx’s Zynq-7000 All Pro- posed of many smart wind turbines, each
video/vision systems. grammable SoC is fast becoming the de of which can adapt to changing weather
Customers are using Xilinx All Pro- facto platform provider for advanced conditions for maximum efficiency. The
grammable FPGAs and SoCs in their ADAS systems. Audi, Mercedes-Benz, turbines are connected to control and en-
vision platforms for real-time analytics BMW, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Mazda, terprise systems that monitor wear and
to create ADAS systems with high-ve- Nissan, Toyota, Acura and Volkswagen schedule preventative maintenance so as
locity object detection/recognition; are among the OEMS using Zynq SoCs to avoid entire-system malfunctions.
clinically precise imaging systems that or other Xilinx All Programmable devic- With the greater capacity, function-
help surgeons guide robotic instru- es in their ADAS systems. The Zynq SoC ality and processing clout of Ultra-
ments with pinpoint accuracy; and serves as a multicamera, multifeature Scale™ and UltraScale+ devices, Xil-
UAVs and surveillance systems that driver assist platform, a high-resolution inx’s IIoT customers will be able to
have instantaneous friend-vs.-foe rec- video and graphics platform, a vehicle advance these smart platforms even
ognition and tracking. networking and connectivity platform further, endowing them with greater
With the soon-to-arrive 16-nano- and an image-processing and recogni- intelligence for next-generation cy-
meter Zynq® UltraScale+™ MPSoC tion platform. Customers implement ber-physical systems. With the Zynq
boasting a total of seven onboard pro- algorithms for their design’s most com- MPSoC’s seven processors, for exam-
cessing cores (quad-core ARM® Cor- plex and compute-intensive functions ple, customers will be able to integrate
tex®-A53, dual-core Cortex-R5 and a in the logic portion of the Zynq SoC and more sensor and motor/motion con-
Mali GPU core), Xilinx customers will use the onboard ARM processing system trol functions into a single device and
be able to create even more intelli- for serial processing. achieve real-time response not possible
gent and highly integrated video sys- With its seven processors, Xilinx’s with any other ASSP-plus-FPGA con-
tems, speeding up ADAS’ push toward new Zynq Ultrascale+ MPSoC is destined figuration. The Zynq MPSoC’s on-chip
autonomous vehicles and Industrial to provide even more fuel for innova- processing and logic will enable im-
IoT’s drive to Industry 4.0 factories tion as OEMs drive toward semi-auton- proved self-monitoring and diagnostics
and smart-city infrastructure. omous and fully autonomous vehicles. functionality. Equipment will employ
With 64-bit application processors, re- self-healing algorithms or partial recon-
From ADAS to autonomous vehicles al-time processors, a graphics proces- figuration to optimize performance as
In the early 2000s, Xilinx added au- sor, on-chip memory and FPGA logic all machine conditions change or demand
tomotive-grade variants to its FPGA on the same device, OEMs can create ebbs and flows. What’s more, the Zynq
product portfolio. Ever since then, ever-more-sophisticated fusion systems Ultrascale+ MPSoC can work in harmo-
automotive customers have given Xil- including V2V communications. What’s ny with Zynq SoC-based systems.
inx devices a growing role in their ef- more, IIoT smart infrastructure and In smart-city applications, compa-
forts to enrich the driving experience smart cities can leverage these same nies can use Zynq SoC-based smart-sen-
through electronics. Zynq MPSoC platforms for V2X. The in- sor systems at the edge of the smart
The automotive industry has gone nate programmability ensures the V2V city’s surveillance network to enhance
through a remarkable renaissance of and V2I networks will scale as the stan- camera resolution and perform object
quality, safety and reliability thanks to dards evolve and as more autonomous detection and real-time threat analysis.
electronics. For many decades, automo- vehicles enter the roadways. Then, they can turn to the Zynq Ultra-
tive electronics largely consisted of wire Scale+ MPSoC to synchronize the data
harnesses connecting lights and radios to Enabling cyber-physical received from each Zynq SoC-based
a battery and an alternator. Then, in the systems for IIoT smart sensor and communicate it ac-
early 2000s, OEMs began using electronic Customers in the industrial market have cordingly with traffic control or author-
control units to replace highly unreliable greatly advanced factory efficiency and ities as threats, odd behavior, accidents
mechanical actuators. Every year since safety over the last two decades using Xil- or congestion are detected.
then, OEMs have added more advanced inx devices. Today, with Xilinx’s All Pro- Likewise in the factory, in addition
electronics to their vehicle lines. What’s grammable FPGAs and SoCs, customers to being at the heart of cyber-physical
more, the development cycles for bring- in all the major segments of IIoT are build- systems, the Zynq Ultrascale+ MPSoC
Third Quarter 2015 Xcell Journal 15COVER STORY
For data centers at the core of
In SDN/NFV, Xilinx All Programmable cloud computing, Xilinx’s devices en-
able companies to create equipment
with maximum programmability and
technologies are enabling customers to very high performance per watt that
they can rapidly optimize for chang-
build equipment with intrusion detection, ing throughput, latency and power
requirements from a wide range of ap-
plications such as machine learning,
load balancing and traffic management. video transcoding, image and speech
recognition, big-data analysis, Cloud-
Xilinx supports efficient management and RAN and data center interconnect.
Xilinx for smart security
routing of data flows, a wide range of With so many exciting technologies un-
der development and certain to reach
communication protocols and programmable new levels of sophistication, autonomy
and intelligence while all being inter-
data plane acceleration on demand.
connected, security measures will need
to keep up.
With many decades playing in the
mil/aero and security sectors, Xilinx
can function as the macro controller of devices, Xilinx is enabling custom- provides physical security by means
a factory network of Zynq SoC-based ers today to quickly bring to the mar- of anti-tamper technology to protect
motor control, motion control and ket 5G and SDN/NFV infrastructure IP and sensitive data implemented
fusion factory-line quality and safety equipment with the highest degree on its devices from physical attacks.
systems. Companies can leverage the of programmability. Xilinx’s All Pro- Xilinx also provides application secu-
seven processors to coordinate real- grammable FPGAs, SoCs and 3D ICs rity via fault-tolerant design, an imple-
time response and analysis received are the most flexible platforms for the mentation methodology that ensures
from the Zynq SoC control system. At evolving software and hardware re- the design can correct faults from
the same time, they can perform meta- quirements of 5G and SDN/NFV. Fur- propagating. Xilinx devices and IP en-
data analysis and communicate it with ther, they are the ideal programmable able customers to implement several
the enterprise through proprietary net- solution for the performance-per-watt types of fault-tolerance techniques
works (in full compliance with safety demands of data center systems at the including real-time system monitor-
and reliability standards) and through heart of the cloud computing business, ing, modular redundancy, watchdog
emerging high-speed 5G wireless and poised to expand rapidly with 5G and alarms, segregation by safety level
SDN/NFV wired networks. SDN/NFV networking. or classification, and isolation of test
In SDN/NFV, Xilinx All Programma- logic for safe removal.
Xilinx for 5G, SDN/NFV ble technologies are enabling custom-
and cloud computing ers to build equipment with intrusion MORE BRILLIANT MINDS,
Xilinx’s devices have played a signifi- detection, load balancing and traffic MORE INNOVATIONS
cant role in every buildout of the wire- management. Xilinx supports efficient In a move that will enable all of these
less and wired networking infrastruc- management and routing of data flows, impending innovations in all of these
ture since the 1980s. With every cycle of a wide range of communication proto- many markets to come to fruition more
Moore’s Law, Xilinx devices have grown cols and programmable data plane ac- rapidly, Xilinx recently introduced its
in capacity and functionality to the celeration on demand. SDx™ development environments to
point where today’s All Programmable In 5G, customers are leveraging ease the programming job. The new
devices enable design teams to innovate Xilinx All Programmable devices to products will bring the performance
new networking systems with the high- create distributed small cells, mas- and programmability advantages of
est level of system programmability and sive-MIMO systems with hundreds of Xilinx devices to a far wider user base
differentiation ever seen. antennas and platforms that perform than ever before. By providing design
With Xilinx’s 7 series, 20nm Ultra- centralized baseband processing via entry via high-level languages, the SDx
Scale and upcoming 16nm UltraScale+ Cloud-RAN. environments enable software engi-
16 Xcell Journal Third Quarter 2015COVER STORY
neers and system architects to pro- Xilinx FPGAs in C, C++ and OpenCL™ As we are fast approaching the mile-
gram Xilinx devices with languages to accelerate the performance of virtu- stone where video/vision, ADAS/auton-
they are accustomed to using (see cov- alized network functions (VNFs). omous vehicles, IIoT, 5G wireless, SDN/
er story, Xcell Journal issue 91). Soft- To enable further innovation in vid- NFV and cloud computing converge, we
ware engineers outnumber hardware eo/vision, ADAS/autonomous vehicles are certain to see a number of innovations
engineers worldwide 10 to 1. and IIoT applications that call for em- that will drastically change the society we
To enable further innovation in SDN, bedded processing, Xilinx’s SDSoC™ live in—hopefully for the better. Today,
Xilinx’s new SDNet™ software-defined development environment allows soft- we are at the early stages of all these in-
environment lets systems engineers ware and system engineers to create novations, and Xilinx is well equipped to
build programmable data plane solu- entire systems in C++. They can op- help customers bring their brilliant prod-
tions with a high-level language to meet timize system performance by having ucts to market. In the following pages in
a network’s unique performance and the environment’s compiler implement this special issue of Xcell Journal, you will
latency requirements. To fuel further slower functions in the Zynq SoC’s or get a small sampling of the many exciting
innovation in NFV and other network MPSoC’s logic blocks. In this way, ar- innovations Xilinx customers are creating
architectures and topologies, develop- chitects and software engineers can in these emerging markets and a peek at
ers can use Xilinx’s SDAccel™ environ- create systems with optimum perfor- how they are leveraging Xilinx’s All Pro-
ment, which enables system and soft- mance and functionality that simply grammable solutions today to make them
ware engineers to program the logic in isn’t achievable in two-chip platforms. a reality for us all…very soon.
Debugging Xilinx's
Zynq TM -7000 family
with ARM ® CoreSight TM
► RTOS support, including Linux
kernel and process debugging
► SMP/AMP multicore Cortex ®- A9
MPCore TMs debugging
► Up to 4 GByte realtime trace
including PTM/ITM
► Profiling, performance and
statistical analysis of Zynq TM's
multicore Cortex ®-A9 MPCore TM
Third Quarter 2015 Xcell Journal 17XCELLENCE IN SMART CITIES World’s First Programmable City Arises, Built on Xilinx FPGAs by Bijan R. Rofoee Senior Network Engineer Bristol Is Open Bijan.Rofoee@bristol.ac.uk Mayur Channegowda Chief Scientist, SDN Zeetta Networks www.zeetta.com Shuping Peng Research Fellow University of Bristol Chief Scientist, Virtualization Zeetta Networks George Zervas Professor of High-Performance Networks University of Bristol Dimitra Simeonidou CTO, Bristol Is Open Professor of High-Performance Networks University of Bristol 18 Xcell Journal Third Quarter 2015
XCELLENCE IN SMART CITIES
Bristol, England, has become a testbed people to cities will grow the number of
urban residents by 60 million every year
for smart-city technologies. The Bristol during that decade. [2] The result is that
more than 70 percent of the world’s pop-
Is Open project is a living experiment in ulation will be living in cities by 2050.
Considering also that cities occupy just
the evolution of the Internet of Things. 2 percent of the world’s landmass while
consuming about three-quarters of its re-
B
sources, the ongoing urbanization pres-
y 2050, the human popu- ment in the smart-city sector includes ents economic and societal challenges
lation will have reached around $150 million for research into and a strain on the urban infrastructure.
9 billion people, with 75 smart cities funded by Research Coun- Growing cities will have to deal with a
percent of the world’s cils U.K.; $79 million over five years variety of challenges to maintain eco-
inhabitants living in cit- earmarked for the new Future Cities nomic advancement, environmental sus-
ies. With already around Catapult center being established tainability and social resiliency.
80 percent of the United Kingdom’s by the Technology Strategy Board in The solution is to make cities smart-
population living in urban areas, the London; $52 million invested in future er. Although there is no absolute defini-
U.K. needs to ensure that cities are fit city demonstrators earlier this year; tion for smart cities, there are a number
for purpose in the digital age. Smart cit- and $63 million recently allocated to of key aspects widely recognized [3] for
ies can help deliver efficiency, sustain- Internet of Things (IoT) research and a smart city’s operations. They include:
ability, a cleaner environment, a higher demonstrator projects.
• Citizen-centric service delivery,
quality of life and a vibrant economy. Bristol Is Open is leading the way
which involves placing the citizen’s
To this end, Bristol Is Open (BIO) is to building a city-scale research and
needs at the forefront.
a joint venture between the University innovation testbed. The aim is to drive
• Transparency of outcomes/perfor-
of Bristol and Bristol City, with collabo- digital innovation for the smart cities of
mance to enable citizens to com-
rators from industry, universities, local the future: the open and programmable
pare and critique performance,
communities, and local and national communities that will be the norm in
establishment by establishment
governments. Bristol Is Open (www. the latter part of the 21st century.
and borough by borough.
bristolisopen.com) is propelling this The BIO testbed is equipped with
• An intelligent physical infrastruc-
municipality of a half million people in leading-edge programmable networking
ture, enabling service providers
southwest England to a unique status as technologies, enabled by a citywide op-
to manage service delivery, data
the world’s first programmable city. erating system called NetOS, that allow
gathering and data analyzing
Bristol will become an open testing smart-city applications to interact with
effectively.
ground for the burgeoning new market city infrastructure—to program, virtual-
• A modern digital, secure and open
of the Industrial Internet of Things— ize and tailor network functions for op-
software infrastructure, to allow
that is, the components of the smart-city timum performance. Xilinx devices as
citizens to access the information
infrastructure. The Bristol Is Open proj- high-performance generic platforms are
they need, when they need it.
ect leverages Xilinx® All Programmable utilized at many points in the city from
FPGA devices in many areas of develop- the wired, wireless and IoT networking Technological enablers for smart
ment and deployment. infrastructure to emulation facilities. cities are inspired by the Internet of
Let’s take a tour of this new type of Things, a market that, according to
THE VISION OF THE SMART CITY urban community, starting with the Gartner, [4] will grow to 26 billion units
A smart city utilizes information and overall vision for programmable cit- installed as of 2020. That total rep-
communications networks along with ies. Then we will take a deeper look resents an almost thirtyfold increase
Internet technologies to address ur- at how the Bristol project is utilizing from 0.9 billion in 2009, with the rev-
ban challenges, with the objective of Xilinx devices to build urban “white enue from technologies and services
dramatically improving livability and boxes” and to deliver various net- exceeding $300 billion. Smart cities de-
resource sustainability. It is predicted working functions. ploy IoT technologies on a wide scale,
[1] that the smart-cities industry will enabling data gathering from sensors
value more than $400 billion global- FUTURE SMART CITIES and things present in the ecosystem,
ly by 2020, with the U.K. expected to More than 100 cities of 1 million people pushing them for analysis and feeding
gain at least a 10 percent share, or $40 will be built in the next 10 years world- back commands to actuators, which
billion. The U.K. government invest- wide [2], while the continuous influx of will control city functions.
Third Quarter 2015 Xcell Journal 19XCELLENCE IN SMART CITIES
From sensing and analysis, infor- tions. These technologies exploit open BRISTOL IS OPEN:
mation passes back to actuators in software and hardware platforms, VISION AND ARCHITECTURE
the city infrastructure to control op- which users can program to tailor Launched in 2013, Bristol Is Open is a
erations dynamically. This arrange- network functions for different use program funded by the local, national
ment is an enabler for driverless cars case requirements. Improved con- and European governments and also by
using smart transport facilities; great- trol, monitoring and resource alloca- the private sector. BIO is already deliv-
er power efficiency thanks to smart tion in the network are the evident ering R&D initiatives that contribute to
lighting; the management of network benefits of deploying programmable the advancement of smart cities and the
resources for different times (daily networks. More important, program- Internet of Things.
and seasonal changes); the movement mable technologies facilitate the BIO aims to serve as a living lab—an
of resources depending on occasions integration of networks with IT fa- R&D testbed targeting city-driven digi-
such as sports events, which require cilities, which will result in greater tal innovation. It provides a managed
high-quality broadcast and coverage; application awareness. multitenancy platform for the develop-
and efficient handling of emergency Software-defined networking (SDN) ment and testing of new solutions for
situations (city evacuation). is one of the main enablers for program- information and communication infra-
mable networks. The SDN foundation structure, and thus forms the core ICT
PROGRAMMABLE CITY is based on decoupling infrastructure enabling platform for the Future Cities
VS. SMART CITY control from the data plane, which agenda. At the infrastructure level, BIO
Smart cities aim to improve and en- greatly simplifies network management comprises five distinctive SDN-enabled
hance public and private service offer- and application development while also infrastructures, as shown in Figure 1:
ings to citizens in a more efficient and allowing deployment of generic hard-
• Active nodes as optoelectronic-net-
cost-effective way by exploiting net- ware in the network for delivering net-
work white boxes using FPGA
work, IT and, increasingly, cloud tech- working functions.
programmable platforms and het-
nologies. To achieve this goal, smart SDN-based scalable and facilitat-
erogeneous optical and Layer 2/3
cities rely extensively on data collected ed network management also greatly
networking infrastructure
from citizens, the environment, vehicles empowers network virtualization. Net-
and basically all the “things” present in work virtualization essentially enables • Heterogeneous wireless infrastructure
the city. The more data that becomes multiple users to operate over shared comprising Wi-Fi, LTE, LTE-A and 60-
available, the more accurately city op- physical resources, isolated from one GHz millimeter-wave technologies
erations can be analyzed, which in turn another, reducing the need for install-
• IoT sensor mesh infrastructure
will lead to the design and availability of ing supplementary physical hardware.
smart-city services. Network function virtualization (NFV), • Network emulator comprising a serv-
For the network infrastructure, city- a more recent innovation in virtualiza- er farm and an FPGA-SoC-network
wide data retrieval and processing mean tion technologies, offers software im- processor farm
massive amounts of sensor data that plementation of network functions in • Blue Crystal high-performance com-
needs to be collected, aggregated and commodity hardware. Network func- puting (HPC) facility
transferred to computational facilities tions such as firewall, deep packet in-
(data centers) for storage and possibly spection, load balancing and so on are On the metro network, the infra-
processing. The wide diversity of sce- deployed as pluggable software con- structure offers access to dynamic opti-
narios and applications presents major tainers in generic machines, expedit- cal switching supporting multi-terabit/
challenges regarding networking and ing network service deployments with second data streams, multirate Layer
computing infrastructure requirements great cost-efficiency. 2 switching (1 to 100 GbE) and Layer
in smart cities. Legacy information and In addition to software-driven net- 3 routing. The metro is also equipped
communications technology (ICT) ur- working, hardware and infrastructure with programmable hardware plat-
ban infrastructure can be a major bot- programmability will progress beyond forms and high-performance servers
tleneck for smart-city operations, as it fixed-function hardware data planes. to allow open access to the infrastruc-
does not offer the capacity, flexibility Adding high-level programmability and ture and a capability to create and
and scalability desirable for the emerg- more sophisticated functionality to experiment with new hardware and
ing, future-proof, resource-demanding the data plane, accessed via standard software solutions. This wired part of
and scalable smart-city applications. software APIs, will make it possible to the infrastructure also connects to the
Programmable networking technolo- manage networking resources more in- Blue Crystal HPC facilities at Bristol in
gies offer unique capabilities for raising telligently and efficiently, increasing the order to support experimentation with
the performance of smart-city opera- rate of innovation. advanced cloud infrastructures.
20 Xcell Journal Third Quarter 2015XCELLENCE IN SMART CITIES
The access network infrastructure ture communication technologies and also enables continuous investment
includes overlapping and seamless cloud networking. into smart infrastructure at the lowest
wireless connectivity solutions (mac- layers of the ICT installations by driv-
ro and small-cell radio technologies) SOFTWARE-DEFINED ing the reduction of costs for physical
using a combination of cellular and NETWORKING FOR CITY components and pushing more of the
Wi-Fi technologies enhanced with INFRASTRUCTURES operational aspects into the software.
millimeter-wave backhaul and direct The communications sector has seen As SDN is now reaching beyond ICT
connections to the optical network. a flowering of innovative solutions in infrastructures into the IoT platforms, it
The facility also supports experimen- recent years based on the concept of creates the opportunity to realize a full
tation platforms for new 5G-and-be- SDN, bringing advances in IT to the circle of adaptability of computing and
yond access technologies such as mil- traditional hardware-driven telecom- communication infrastructures, where
limeter-wave-based access solutions munications world. This decoupling sensory and real-world information
with beam tracking, as well as new of control and data through SDN en- drives the operation of the network.
technology enablers such as massive ables innovative ways of controlling Network infrastructures in turn are uti-
MIMO for ultrahigh-density networks a network, while relying on a basic lized to provide the sensor information
in the 2-GHz band. data-forwarding operation, common to applications and services in a mean-
In addition, BIO provides priority ac- across all networking elements. The ap- ingful and timely manner. At BIO, it is
cess to the infrastructure (for example, proach allows the integration of novel our vision for that programmability and
lampposts) for the additional installation architecture concepts, such as infor- adaptability across the various layers of
of sensor nodes in the area, supported mation-centric networking (ICN), into the overall system to ultimately imple-
by suitable data aggregators, computing such a software-driven network. SDN ment the notion of what we call a Living
and storage resources. Optionally, these
resources can directly interface into the
wired and wireless network. BIO has
also installed a low-energy wireless-sen-
sor mesh network. This network will
support IoT-based research, with initial
sensors supporting environmental mon-
itoring (temperature, air quality, pollu-
tion levels, lighting, noise and humidity)
and smart streetlights.
BIO will also provide access, through
suitable secure interfaces, to IoT assets
already installed elsewhere in the city,
including parking sensors, traffic lights,
traffic flow sensors, surveillance (safe-
ty) cameras and public-vehicle sensors.
Small sensors, including the smart-
phones and GPS devices of willing
participants, will supply information
about many aspects of city life, includ-
ing energy, air quality and traffic flows.
All the data generated will be rendered
anonymous and made public through
an “open data” portal.
The entire platform uses SDN con-
trol principles and, as such, is fully pro-
grammable by experimenters and end
users. Internationally, the BIO experi-
mental network will be the first of its
kind and will generate new and exciting Figure 1 – The Bristol Is Open fiber network places active core nodes at four locations in
opportunities to pioneer the develop- the city. HPC facilities and emulation are accessible through the network core.
Wireless technologies (802.11ac, 802.11ad, LTE, LTE-A) are spread out through the center.
ment of hardware and software for fu-
Third Quarter 2015 Xcell Journal 21You can also read
