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Electronic System Design with AWS Building Blocks

March 10, 2023

Mark Stansberry
February 27, 2022

Executive Summary
This paper discusses Amazon Web Services (AWS) System Design Libraries. Specifically, it focuses on the AWS Hardware Instance Library,  Solutions Library and  Edge library. The paper also discusses the latest AWS product offerings that are targeted at the Telco market like AWS’s Network Builder and Integrated Private Wireless.

The paper can be used as introductory or training guide on the use of AWS based hardware and software products for the design of off-premises (cloud) or on-premises (Edge) electronic systems,

As automation pushes forward, more businesses are seeing benefits with tightly coupled telco  compute solutions at the edge.  The overriding question is whether telecom companies or cloud compute companies are a better choice for implementing telco-compute systems. Or are the best solutions a result of telecom and cloud companies working together. The answer to that question depends on a company’s application, their design staff resources, their compute and telco needs, their  budgets and the product offerings of the telco companies and the compute companies.

AWS Electronic System Design Library
With Amazon’s System Design Library one has, in theory, the ability to design any digital electronic system on whatever scale and in any geographic configuration. This can be an electronic system that runs in a distant data center, an electronic system that runs at many distant data centers, or an electronic system that runs on a private edge, like at a hospital, a factory or school.

It is instructive before starting an electronic system design to take a close look at the components of the AWS system design platform:

Data Center Hardware Instance Library
Edge System Modules Library
FPGA Silicon Instances Library
Application Specific System Modules (AWS Solutions Library)
Virtual Software Functions Library
Compute, Memory, and Database Management Software
Design Framework Software

The AWS hardware design library is hierarchical in nature and enables the design of off-site cloud based electronic systems or on-premises (Edge) electronic systems. FPGA silicon instances are used to design custom hardware instances at the gate level.  Hardware instances are compute and data storage modules that are connected together to form  application system modules. Application system modules (the AWS Solution Library) are used  as either standalone electronic systems or connected to form very large-scale electronic systems.  AWS Edge system modules, composed of application modules, are used to build on-premises electronic systems.

The AWS hardware instance library includes  several hundred optimized hardware instances. Or to be specific, hardware boards equipped with different types of processors, different types of memory, and different types of programable logic. .

Complementing the AWS hardware instance library is the AWS virtual function library. The virtual software functions library is used to overlay hardware specific functionality onto hardware instances, application system modules and Edge system modules. A virtual  function library is a software defined hardware library. Virtual software libraries permit hardware functions that have been traditionally implemented on uniquely defined semiconductor  chips,   to be executed on microprocessors, coprocessors, GPUs  or Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) instead.  This eliminates the need to include, for the most part,  any other chips other than processors and FPGAs. This  greatly simplifies hardware complexity, reduces system design, and makes it easy to implement major system design changes in up and running systems. 

The Edge system modules are AWS approach to the on-premises market. AWS literature suggests that these modules can be preconfigured with any number of hardware instances. Complementing these edge products and Amazon’s instance libraries are Amazon application specific module products. (Also known as the AWS solutions library). You will find on the AWS Solutions Library page numerous prebuilt electronic system designs (composed of Amazon hardware instances) for almost every industry application imaginable.

The system management software is used in a large part to negotiate hardware resources, monitor performance, and apply security and backup within the system infrastructure in  accordance with service level agreement requirements.

Finally, the design framework software lets the designer connect different instances together to form large scale systems solutions for a varied number of compute and memory intensive applications.

Amazon’s Hardware Instances
AWS hardware instances are divided into eight different application categories. In each application category one can choose a specific different instance type. For example, in the general purpose instance  category, there are over 15 different instance types.  Different instance types incorporate different processors with different amounts of memory, different types of memory and different network data rates.

The microprocessors used in AWS instances include Amazon Gravitron processor, a variety of Intel processors, like Xeon Ice Lake, Cascade Lake, Broadwell, and Skylake, as  well as  AMD’s EPYC 7000 series processors  and  NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core and K89 GPUs (with 2,496 parallel processing cores) The instance you select depends heavily on what type of processor you will need. That is not a simple design decision.  Different processors have different hardware features built into them. Furthermore, some processors support specific instruction extensions while others don’t. Then again, some processors score much higher on in-system performance monitoring. Also, some processors have more advanced security features and power monitoring capabilities than others. That’s all not to mention a processor’s power management algorithm, its instruction processing throughput and clock frequency. Besides the instance’s processor, other hardware functionality to look for within instances are Error Correction Code (ECC) memory, the type of bus, PCI-Express for instance, or FPGA design capacity in terms Digital Signal Processing (DSP) engines. Specifically, if you are looking to implement a network application, take a close look at the AWS instances that contain Xilinx Virtex UltraScale+ VU9P FPGAs, also known as the F1 instance.

Amazon provides a data sheet for each instance type. In each instance family one will find specifications related to

Instance Size
 vCPUs per Instance
GiB of Memory per Instance
Aggregate Disk Throughput
Network Bandwidth
EBs Bandwidth
Instance Storage
GPU Memory
Number of GPUs
EFA Network Bandwidth

AWS On-Premises (Edge) Products
Amazon’s on-premise Edge products are included in the AWS Outpost and Snow lineup Simply put, AWS Outposts are fully managed application solutions overlaid and connected together in hardware  racks. Amazon ships them directly to your facility.

The Snow lineup is a little more complicated. The product family includes the SnowCone, SnowBall and SnowMobile edge devices. The differentiator for these products includes the number of virtual CPUs,  as well as RAM  rotating hard disk drive capacity and SATA SSD Flash EEPROM memory capacity.  For example, the SnowCone device provides 8 TB or 14 TB of disk drive  storage. In the middle of the line is the SnowBall Edge Storage Optimized Device. It offers a significantly higher number of virtual CPUs RAM, HDD and SDD memory capacity than SnowBall Edge devices. At the very top of the scale, designed for companies with very large amounts of data, is SnowMobile. This device is so large it is hard to call it a device. Amazon ships the Snowmobile to your data center or telco center in a truck. Once at your facility, the SnowMobile is connected to your data center’s backbone. Subsequently, the Snowmobile is used to download all the data from the data center.  Once the data is downloaded, the truck then takes the SnowMobile to another data center that might need the data in close vicinity. This can be less expensive than transporting the data over the telecom network.

AWS Telco Product Line Up
AWS telco lineup includes not only the instances discussed  above but also solutions branded under the AWS for Telecom flag. The AWS Telecom flag product line-up includes

Telco Network Builder
            Integrated Private Wireless on AWS
            AWS Wavelength

According to Amazon AWS (1), “AWS Telco Network Builder is a fully managed network automation service that enables Communications Service Providers (CSPs) to deploy, run, and scale their telco networks on AWS faster and more easily.” Although to the point, the underlying press release suggests that with Telco Network Builder, telcos can put the entire network architecture into the AWS cloud with little time and little effort. Although service is only available in certain areas of the United States, Telco Network Builder has already won over customers and partners.

Integrated Private Wireless on AWS  integrates CSP private wireless offerings, like private 5G and 4G LTE. The offerings integrate CSPs’ private 5G and 4G LTE wireless networks with AWS  Regions, Local Zones, Outpost and Snow families of  services and products. ,

Complementing its Wireless on AWS offering is AWS Wavelength. AWS Wavelength  embed high powered compute modules into 5G network nodes. This allows for organizations to process and respond to information over their private 5G networks quickly  This is specifically important for factory automation where thousands of machines must talk to each other and respond to each other’s commands. Cloud based solutions won’t do here. The response time over the public or long-haul systems is often not fast enough. One especially important application is the dumb machine market. Today many advanced factory machines have their own microprocessors and memory built in. With 5G embedded compute, tens of thousands of smart machines could be replaced with less costly dumb machines that are interfaced to one central  5G supersmart node

What about Virtual Network Functions
AWS virtual network functions have not been extensively  elaborated on or documented. However, one can assume that AWS virtual network functions are ones commonly written about in technical literature.  Logic level hardware  network functions that can be virtualized to run on a processor or FPGA chip. have been well-published. These virtual functions fall into several telco categories: AI decision making, switching, signaling, security traffic analysis, gateways and many more. Picture at the Edge
Whether you are a telco provider or data center cloud provider, one primary goal is to provide a low-cost,  hassle-free, turnkey, on-premises solution for the customer.  Whether the premise is a manufacturing, healthcare, office or education facility, many facilities simply want to eliminate cabling, reduce installation costs and time,  increase communications and computer throughput, lower operating costs and improve security. AWS products and more specifically AWS telco network, 5G   and solutions library along with its hundreds of instances allow for fast customizable design and installation. The AWS solution suggests  a path to lower initial engineering costs as well as lower long-run maintenance, and engineering  upgrade costs. However, AWS does not say much about operating costs or performance. Performance benchmarks are needed to evaluate performance-cost ratios. And that would be required for all the different wired and wireless medium connections used, 5G, Ethernet or fiber. The top level 5G automation manufacturing  design below is based on a 5G wireless communication media. It could be constructed with AWS compute instances, and with AWS library solution modules.

Telco Cloud Design

References

  1. Amazon Press Releases (2023, Feb 21), AWS Announces AWS Telco Network Builder, Date Accessed (2023, Feb 26)
    URL: https://press.aboutamazon.com/2023/2/aws-announces-aws-telco-network-builderAmazon  
  2. Amazon, AWS Hardware Instance Types, Date Accessed (2023, Feb 26)
    URL: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/
  3. Amazon, What is Integrated Private Wireless on AWS?, Date Accessed (2023, Feb 26)

URL https://aws.amazon.com/telecom/integrated-private-wireless/

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Last updated on March 10, 2023