Authors
Published
27 Jun 2024Form Number
LP1981PDF size
6 pages, 265 KBEdge computing challenge and a solution
The benefits of AI In today's business environment are becoming more obvious as companies strive to take advantage of the new technology. Although typically most of the AI processing tends to occur in the data center, there are many opportunities at edge or remote locations where the data is created or collected. The Lenovo ThinkEdge series provides an ideal combination of compact size with abundant storage and powerful processing. Placing ThinkEdge servers at remote locations can help offload the AI data and processing demands on the datacenter.
The ThinkEdge series servers are ideal for deployment in tight spaces. Depending on the model, they can be mounted on a wall, or ceiling, placed on a desk or mounted in a rack. These edge servers place increased processing power, storage, and network closer to where data is generated, allowing actions resulting from the analysis of that data to take place more quickly. The ThinkEdge servers are designed to handle a wide range of workloads, such as: Augmented Reality, CDN, Edge AI & MRP, Machine Learning, NFV, Online Gaming, Realtime processing, Smart surveillance, Video Analytics & Streaming.
Figure 1. Lenovo ThinkEdge SE455 V3
Lenovo ThinkEdge offerings are ideal for running applications at remote locations because of their low cost and high-performance capabilities. They are industry-standard servers providing cost effective computing and fast high-density local storage at the edge. With their smaller footprint, the ThinkEdge series servers are ideal for deployment in remote office and edge locations.
AI Edge Use Cases
A key benefit of AI and edge computing is the ability of devices to locally compute, process, and analyze data with high quality and minimal network latency from typical datacenter connections. There are many examples of edge computing use cases but here are a few popular ones.
- Healthcare – Patient and equipment monitoring
- Retail and grocery stores – Cashier-less payments, real-time inventory, security
- Financial Services – Kiosk safety and fraud prevention
- Manufacturing – Automation, smart sensors, quality assurance
- Gas stations – Payments, security, inventory
- Transportation – Trucking, shipping, autonomous vehicles
Microsoft Azure SQL Edge on ThinkEdge Systems
SQL Server is a well-known, mission-critical database system used in many customer datacenters. It is also available in an edge-sized version that runs efficiently on edge servers as a containerized application. Azure SQL Edge is a small-footprint, robust IoT database product that runs on Lenovo Edge servers to process the data locally for increased security and reduced latency.
The combination of Azure SQL Edge and Lenovo’s ThinkEdge series servers provides the ideal solution for processing data aggregated from scores of IoT devices in typical edge use cases like retail, transportation, and manufacturing. Azure SQL Edge also has Machine Learning (ML) inferencing capabilities. ML Models can be trained on-premises and deployed to the edge where AI inferencing can be done.
Lenovo ThinkEdge Portfolio
Below is a summary of current Lenovo ThinkEdge servers and configurations available. Below are GPUs supported on the edge servers.
GPUs are important in any AI solution due to their parallel processing capability. They contain thousands of smaller cores designed for handling multiple tasks simultaneously. This is useful for AI tasks that require a large number of matrix multiplications and other parallel computations.
GPUs can also manage large volumes of data more efficiently than traditional CPUs due to their parallel architecture. After training, AI models need to make predictions or inferences. GPUs are also used to speed up the inference process, better enabling real-time AI applications.
System |
Processor |
GPU |
Memory |
Storage |
SE455 V3 (2U) |
1-socket AMD EPYC™ 8004 Series (4th Gen AMD EPYC), up to 64 cores and 200W TDP |
Up to 6x single-width GPUs or 2x double-width GPUs |
6x TruDDR5 slots; Maximum 576GB using 6x 96GB RDIMMs |
4x 2.5-inch 15mm front drives 2x M.2 boot drives |
SE450 (2U) |
1-socket 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Platinum, up to 36 cores, up to 225W TDP |
Up to 4x single-width GPUs or 2x double-width GPUs |
10x DDR4 slots; Maximum 1TB using 8x 128GB 3DS RDIMMs |
6x 2.5-inch 7mm drives; Up to 6x NVMe drives 2x M.2 boot drives |
SE360 V2 (2U) |
1-socket Intel Xeon D-2700, up to 16 cores |
Support for NVIDIA A2, NVIDIA L4, Intel Data Center GPU Flex 140, Qualcomm Cloud AI 100 |
Up to 256GB in 4x slots, using 64GB DIMMs; 3200MHz TruDDR4 |
2x SATA/NVMe 2.5" 7mm drives; or 8x M.2 using NVMe, 2x M.2 2280 NVME boot drives |
For More Information
To learn more about this Lenovo solution contact your Lenovo Business Partner or visit: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/ai/
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