Microsoft Expands IoT And Edge Computing Portfolio With Windows And SQL Server – Forbes

At the CEATAC event in Japan, Microsoft announced new additions to its Windows and SQL Server family of products to support IoT and Edge Computing use cases. The new portfolio helps Microsoft in realizing its vision of Intelligent Cloud and Intelligent Edge.

Windows 10 IoT Core

During his keynote at CEATEC, Microsoft's Partner Director of Program Management for Intelligent Edge Operating Systems, Ian LeGrow announced the new flavor of operating systems under the Windows for IoT family. He also announced the partnership with NXP, a Netherlands-based semiconductor company that manufactures microcontrollers and processors. There is a new version of SQL Server exclusively designed for the edge. Microsoft is building a set of container images for accelerating machine learning inferencing at the edge.

Windows 10 IoT Core was the first device-specific OS from Microsoft which is optimized for smaller devices with or without a display that runs on both ARM and x86/x64 devices. It can be installed on popular single-board computers such as Raspberry Pi, DragonBoard 410c, MinnowBoard and NXP devices. Developers can use C, .NET Core and Python environments to develop IoT applications.

In addition to Windows 10 IoT Core, Microsoft has invested in additional flavors of Windows - Windows 10 IoT Enterprise and Windows Server IoT 2019.

Windows 10 IoT Enterprise is targeted at independent device vendors and software vendors building industrial IoT products. Microsoft calls it a binary equivalent to Windows 10 Enterprise, which includes familiar development and management tools as client PCs and laptops. The OS is meant to build fixed-purpose devices that run a single application or a fixed-set of applications. Windows 10 IoT Enterprise runs on a wide range of AMD and Intel CPUs.

Edge Computing is not just confined to single-board computers and smaller devices. High-end servers can also be configured as Edge Computing machines. To support the heavy-edge scenario, Microsoft has a flavor of Windows Server branded as Windows Server IoT 2019. It is a binary equivalent to Windows Server 2019 that enables the usage of the same familiar development and management tools as general-purpose servers running Windows Server. Customers can run data processing, machine learning, and analytics workloads at the Edge based on Windows Server IoT 2019.

Microsoft has tightly integrated Windows for IoT family with Azure. All the devices based Windows IoT OS are registered with Azure IoT Hub for management and maintenance.

To bring AI and ML inferencing to the edge, Microsoft has built a container image called the Windows ML container. Currently available in preview, it is specifically designed for delivering AI-inferencing workloads built using the Windows ML API. The container image can take advantage of GPU acceleration provided by the underlying hardware. Applications can use sensors or cameras connected using USB, I2C, SPI or GPIO through the container. Microsoft has optimized the container image to run on devices with resource constraints. The company claims that the on-disk size of the container is approximately 350 MB, significantly smaller than any other GPU-enabled inferencing container in the market.

Apart from the OS, Microsoft has also built a flavor of SQL Server exclusively for IoT and Edge called SQL Server IoT 2019. According to Microsoft, SQL Server IoT 2019 is the binary equivalent to SQL Server 2019, which will be licensed through the OEM channel. The product is specifically designed for dedicated-use, server-class Edge appliances running application software. SQL Server IoT 2019 can be deployed on Windows Server IoT 2019 to bring mission-critical data processing and analytics capabilities to the Edge.

Microsoft has also announced the general availability of Windows 10 IoT Core Board Support Packages for the NXP i.MX family of processors in partnership with NXP. Customers can use the combination of Windows and NXP devices that are connected to the Azure cloud to deploy industrial automation and IIoT workloads.

Having invested in the cloud platform for IoT services, Microsoft is now expanding the OS and server portfolio to support industrial IoT and Edge Computing use cases.

The software stack on the devices based on Windows IoT, SQL Server IoT, Azure IoT Edge, Stream Analytics, Windows ML Containers combined with Azure IoT platform in the cloud covers the whole spectrum of devices and cloud for building intelligent connected solutions.

With Windows for IoT and the Azure IoT platform, Microsoft has a unique advantage in delivering an integrated edge-to-cloud platform to customers.

Visit link:

Microsoft Expands IoT And Edge Computing Portfolio With Windows And SQL Server - Forbes