Modular Computing Nodes
The blueprint of CAPE’s hardware platforms is based on a modular approach. This is achieved using COM-HPC, an established and widely used embedded form factor for Compute-on-Modules (COM) developed by PICMG.
The COM-HPC specification offers two bascially different groups: COM-HPC server for PCIe-centric processing and COM-HPC Client for interface-centric processing.
COM-HPC in CAPE
Base platforms
With COM-HPC client and server, both predominant standards are supported by CAPE’s hardware platforms.
- The embedded High Performance Server (eHPS) supports a heterogeneous setup with one COM-HPC server Type E, and two COM-HPC client form factors (Type B and Type C)
- The Edge Micro Data Center (EMDC) supports up to 7 COM-HPC server Type E modules
COM-HPC Modules
Since COM-HPC has been on the market for several years now, there is currently a wide range of CPU modules in the COM-HPC form factor. These include both high-performance x86 architectures and energy-efficient ARM-based nodes. In order to further increase the range of architectures, CAPE is working on the integration of several heterogeneous architectures:
- GPUSoC (NVIDIA Orin) for COM-HPC Client Type B
- GPUSoC (NVIDIA THor) for COM-HPC Client Type B
- RISCV (PIC64 HPSC1000) for COM-HPC Server Type E
- FPGASoC (TBD)