Medical Design Briefs - January 2023 - 22

TECHNOLOGY LEADERS Electrical Connectors/Wires/Cables
The 2U rack server secunet medical connect Athene offers
high performance for resource- and computeintensive
processes and is based on COM-HPC server
modules from congatec. (Credit: secunet)
The computer-on-module approach makes it easy to develop dedicated medical systems with applicationspecific
interface layouts using custom-designed carrier boards. (Credit: congatec)
and gateway should ideally be integrated
in one system. Ultimately, this also reduces
the hardware costs and the MTBF
of the overall system. For security and
certification reasons, however, the workloads
must be decoupled through virtualization
to ensure they do not influence
each other. This, for instance, allows system
components that are not relevant
for certification, such as visualization or
AI, to be updated without the entire system
having to be recertified. It is also vital
to ensure that the safety-critical control
system is not affected by a crash of
other system components. Besides many
processor cores, this requires comprehensive
virtualization support.
The latest COM-HPC client modules with 12th generation Intel Core processors give medical OEMs access to Intel's
innovative performance hybrid architecture with up to 16 cores/24 threads and PCIe Gen 5.0. (Credit: congatec)
needs. In endoscopy, for example, 8k resolutions
are already fairly standard today
even though they were only introduced in
2018. In this context, 8k means 37.8
megapixels at 8,192 × 4,320 pixels, which
leads to four times higher data volumes
than the 4k resolutions with 4,096 × 2,160
pixels that are common in other imaging
procedures. When further considering
that modern surgical procedures are to be
performed by robots, possibly even using
telemedicine, it is easy to understand that
the systems must provide extremely fast
22
real-time data transmission for controlling
the robots. Processing an uncompressed
video stream with 4k RGB resolution at 10bit
HDR color dynamics and 60 frames per
second requires 14.83 Gbit/s; to do the
same with 8k takes 59.33 Gbit/s.
More Tasks - Fewer Systems
But that is by no means the end of all
requirements. To consolidate mixedcritical
applications efficiently on a single
platform, the individual workloads
such as visualization, functional safety,
www.medicaldesignbriefs.com
Modules Make Embedding AI Easier
Developers of the next generation of
multifunctional medical computer systems
must therefore not only integrate
new core technologies; they also require
an entirely new class of medical computing
performance. To optimize the reliability
and time-to-market of their new
designs, they are also more dependent
than ever on application-ready building
blocks and design-in support for embedding
the necessary intelligence and connectivity.
Computer-on-modules - particularly
those that comply with the
PICMG's new COM-HPC standard - are
an important strategic lever for this.
Computer-on-modules are by far the
most popular technology for embedded
designs across a wide range of industries.
Computer-on-modules are super components
that integrate all important PC
building blocks such as CPU, GPU, and
RAM as well as a wide range of standard
interfaces in a pre-validated, ready-to-use
component. Any custom-specific parts are
designed into a carrier board, which is a
Medical Design Briefs, January 2023

http://www.medicaldesignbriefs.com

Medical Design Briefs - January 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Medical Design Briefs - January 2023