Industrial PCs and Artificial Intelligence

In recent years, many manufacturers have introduced dedicated equipment for artificial intelligence. 
This is particularly true for Intel, which for several years has shown a roadmap where AI-related products are increasingly prevalent. Moreover, we will inevitably talk about machine learning or deep learning. Since 2019, Intel microprocessors have integrated Intel Deep Learning Boost, an architecture dedicated to significantly improving their performance when used in AI contexts. It was also at the end of 2019 that Intel acquired the company « Habana labs » for 2 billion dollars.

Habana Labs is an Israeli manufacturer of microprocessors specially designed to be used in datacenters providing artificial intelligence services.
Another big name in computer component manufacturing, Nvidia has also turned to artificial intelligence for several years.

If all these pieces of equipment are already found in consumer devices, they are also integrated into industrial PCs.

Today NVIDIA is one of the main players in the AI race for industry and more generally the professional world. The company, historically specialized in graphics cards, has largely specialized in AI with the creation of dedicated GPUs for:

• Embedded systems
• Transportation
• Data centers
• ...

If artificial intelligence is making its way into industrial PCs, it is also accessible through third-party services in the Cloud. After SaaS (Software as a Service), IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), and PaaS (Platform as a Service), AIaaS (Artificial Intelligence as a Service) is added to the list of decentralized digital tools.

Like other “as a service”, AIaaS involves using third-party services via the Cloud. Companies offering AIaaS solutions provide optimized hardware for artificial intelligence and supply the appropriate software tools. They often even offer predefined hardware and software configurations, allowing for an even simpler and faster setup.

While the uses of artificial intelligence are often mentioned for everyday applications, what could be its uses in industry?
Just like in the consumer sector, the use of artificial intelligence in industry, via an industrial PC for AI or external services, can have multiple applications. Today, AI in industry is more commonly referred to as AIoT. 

The industry is in constant evolution. Today, there is a trend towards moving from industrial production ensured by independent machines monitored by humans, to smarter chains capable of relaying production data into IT tools. In this new configuration, artificial intelligence can be used to analyze the data relayed from production tools, in particular to:

• verify the proper functioning of the elements of the chain, 
• validate the quality and conformity of manufactured parts,
• improve the manufacturing process by detecting possible optimizations,
• ensure the safety of personnel working on the chain

In other words, the goal of AI in industry is to optimize and ensure the reliability of production, by improving processes and reducing waste, by bringing cohesion between the different elements of the production system and ensuring control over all of these elements.

The industrial maintenance can also be enhanced by AI. Many use cases are added every day. For example, there is predictive maintenance which aims, with the help of machine learning or deep learning, to predict the state of equipment in the future. Thus, it is possible to foresee in advance the problems that could arise with the equipment.