Advanced Computing in the Age of AI | Friday, March 29, 2024

HPE, Intel Join Forces on IoT Development 

(Source: Shutterstock - Tashatuvango)

Two U.S. tech giants with strategies in place to attack the nascent Internet of Thing market said they are joining forces to forge open standards while moving computing power closer to the sensors and other devices at the edge of IoT networks.

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (NASDAQ: HPE) and chipmaker Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) said Tuesday (Nov. 17) they would collaborate to develop open standards based on the IoT with an emphasis on "computing at the edge." The initiative reflects a trend toward moving intelligence closer to IoT sensors and devices to accelerate data collection and analysis.

The partners said they would combine Intel's IoT platform with HPE products placed at the edge of networks used to collect, process and analyze sensor and other unstructured data. They said the new IoT systems would reside outside traditional datacenters and computing would be based on Intel Core i5 and Atom processors.

HPE and Intel also said they would establish IoT labs at HPE facilities in Houston, Grenoble, France, and Singapore. The test beds are intended to help prospective customers accelerate deployment of IoT applications.

"Increased intelligence at the edge of an organization’s network will allow faster access to relevant data, require less bandwidth to transport useless data and ultimately accelerate the time to insight for enterprises," the partners said in a statement announcing the IoT partnership.

The partners said they would target open solutions for integrating "heterogeneous systems and technologies" across IoT devices, sensors at the edge of networks as well as datacenters. The offerings could be used for both data analytics and control at the edge of networks.

Intel rolled out its IoT platform last December. At the time, it claimed about $2 billion in revenue over the previous year from its emerging IoT business. The chipmaker also said its focus would be developing single architecture for data analytics that would leverage predictive to deep learning technologies.

HPE, the enterprise infrastructure spinoff from Hewlett-Packard, also stressed its involvement in several IoT technology consortia along with standards groups focused on the industrial IoT and the IP for Smart Objects alliance.

Meanwhile, both companies are betting that big data applications like data streaming analytics will emerge as a major IoT use case. Prior to splitting in two, the former HP unveiled a big data platform that combines open source technologies with homegrown platforms like Vertica analytics tool. Along with an SQL database with Hadoop native file support, the platform also includes native integration with Apache Spark.

The partners' IoT strategy revolves around moving Intel's computing power and data analysis tools closer to the huge amounts of data expected to be gathered by IoT sensor networks. Meanwhile, the HPE labs will help potential customers piece together the components of future industrial and commercial networks of sensors and devices.

HP Enterprise also said it plan to reveal more details of the IoT initiative during an annual company event scheduled for early December in London.

About the author: George Leopold

George Leopold has written about science and technology for more than 30 years, focusing on electronics and aerospace technology. He previously served as executive editor of Electronic Engineering Times. Leopold is the author of "Calculated Risk: The Supersonic Life and Times of Gus Grissom" (Purdue University Press, 2016).

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