Interview with Andrew Kim, CEO, Machbase
Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is often referred to as Industry 4.0: a major upgrade of today’s industrial operations. Real-time analytics, data value and operational decisions are key goals for Operations Technology (OT) deployed within the industry. However, for industrial applications to scale, stay connected, be secure and process data quickly and efficiently, intelligent data processing needs to happen at the device edge.
Machbase and the Industrial Internet of Things
Chris Shore, Director of Embedded Solutions at Arm, recently sat down with Machbase’s CEO Andrew Kim to find out more about how their Arm-based technology is transforming the future of IIoT with advanced edge compute for industrial applications.
It was clear to Machbase founders back in 2013 that machine or sensor data is critical for enabling IIoT real-time analytics – however, this results in a data tsunami of massive tables and high-speed ingestion. In order for the application to be effective, a database engine that is incredibly fast and works at the industrial device endpoint, such as a robot in a smart factory, is needed. Machbase has become that database and is on a mission to enable the full potential of data insight on the IIoT edge. They have produced the fastest time-series database management system (DBMS) for industrial IoT and believe it is set to be the go-to database for all future IIoT operations.
What does success look like at Machbase?
We enable IIoT companies to improve their operations, increase efficiencies, eliminate downtime, and achieve higher ROI. We currently enable operations in many applications including smart logistics, agriculture, in the home, on the grid, in cities/buildings, mining, and manufacturing to make sense of their data in real-time on the edge, fog (on-premise), and on the cloud.
Success for us is when we save our customers money and time. As an example of what this looks like at our company, we recently improved a factory logistics operation that needed to collect and process 100,000 records a second per node across 500 nodes. To put that into context, that’s 50,000,000 records a second on which to perform vibration testing and anomaly detection. This was done on the edge device and aggregated on an on-premise fog server. The result was a vast improvement in uptime of the factory floor, with no manufacturing shutdown, saving millions of dollars in downtime.
Robotic applications on a production line cannot afford unexpected wear, cracks, or particles to interrupt rail performance or cause damage – and this requires real-time analytics at the edge that Machbase provides.
What is Machbase’s product offering to the IoT?
Machbase offers a complete unified product platform that includes three products: Edge, Fog and Cluster/Cloud editions. Machbase enables data’s value to be unlocked locally at the edge and beyond.
- The Edge Edition is great for real-time analytics of IoT sensor data, and localized machine learning can support up to 9 billion records per day.
- The Fog Edition is great for fast data processing performance in a single server node of local data/asset aggregation and can support up to 42 billion records per day.
- The Cluster/Cloud Edition is great for big data applications and supports multi-node cluster and over 1 trillion records per day.
Machbase’s product overview
How is Machbase currently using Arm in its solutions?
Machbase works on the entire spectrum of Arm products and their licensees, including many edge examples, such as nVidia Jetson, Raspberry Pi 3, and ARTik.
Arm’s low-power, high-performance technology enables edge computing for us. Machbase is able to run 100s of databases on Arm processors; from processing on smart factory floors to a utility’s distribution infrastructure to an automotive ecosystem. We enable decentralized and distributed data analyses through a wide area of system architectures, leveraging Arm’s offering at the edge and fog, and preparing data for big data analytics in the back-office cloud/cluster.
Arm provides Machbase with scalable compute solutions that provide flexibility to choose the best fit in terms of power and form factor, allowing Machbase to deploy in volume and in ways previously unimaginable.
What do you think is going to be the most significant change for the industry in the next five years?
Machbase believes edge compute is the next disruptive phase in the computing evolution, similar to what desktop compute did to central computing in the 80s. A few drivers of edge compute include:
- Real-time response
- Lack of network 100% availability
- Security and Safety concerns against DdoS
- Cost reduction of the Edge and cloud storage
- The need for intelligence (AI/ML) close to the source
What is Machbase doing next to solve the industry’s most significant change?
Machbase now has a robust database platform for all of IIoT. Next, Machbase will offer better visualization of the data from years to microseconds in real-time. Machbase sees better integration with the cloud technologies and the direct support for artificial intelligence and machine learning at the edge itself.
Learn more about Machbase by visiting their website or by contacting Jim Fox, VP of Sales, for more information.
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