Trains & Railways

Connectivity and control for efficient and safe railway on-board electronics and wayside equipment

Overview

Modern trains - long-haul, high-speed, light-rail, subway - have built-in intelligence throughout which makes travelling fast, safe, reliable and comfortable. Innovation across all aspects of on-board and wayside system design improve performance and efficiency while also enhancing safety and security. 

On-board control systems process data from a large variety of cabin components including doors, lighting, cameras, air conditioning, brakes, lavatories, displays, diagnosis functions and power management – often in real time and always with resilient methods. Wayside objects ensure safe traffic control with intelligent signaling and manage the power distribution along the tracks and on platforms, provide secure video surveillance and supports the passenger on the platform with HMIs, displays and other information systems. Enhanced requirements concerning availability and built-in diagnostics as well as the compatibility to networks are mandatory.

Only AMD combines scalable processing performance, deterministic programmable logic, certified design flows for functional safety and state-of-the-art security with long-term reliability over harsh conditions, and longevity of supply. Designers benefit from re-use across AMD the Zynq 7000 and Zynq UltraScale+ families of SoCs. This maximizes productivity for embedded and cloud-based software development investments across diverse applications such as:

  • Energy efficient auxiliary, traction, and other motor control
  • Resilient control of operator panels, brakes, diagnostic functions, power management
  • Secure connectivity to wayside control and cloud-based trip optimization

Real-time connected control of passenger safety and comfort amenities such as doors, lighting, air conditioning, lavatories, entertainment, and emergency communication systems.

AMD solutions and design methods include Time Sensitive Networking for futureproof, real-time connectivity, a purpose-built architecture for Functional Safety, the integrated hardware root-of-trust, are indicative of a carefully planned scalable and adaptable industrial-grade embedded platform, not merely a common embedded processor. Partners in the AMD Ecosystem extend the offering with industry leading IP for a differentiation and can help with design implementation from foundational design support to domain-specific safety and security.

Proven capabilities:

  • Embedded AI-based predictive maintenance for critical sub-systems
  • Modern and legacy connectivity protocols in one adaptable device
  • Heterogeneous architecture to maximize performance/watt by offloading to overcome bottlenecks in processor-only architectures
  • Advanced multi-sensor-based driver assistance features for front and surround awareness
  • Runtime environments on Cortex A cores
  • Machine Learning technology for advanced real-time embedded video surveillance capabilities in-camera
  • Real-time analytics and machine learning
  • Cybersecurity with cryptographic acceleration and 3rd party solutions to achieve consistency with recommendations from the Industrial Ethernet Consortium (IIC) and the Trusted Computing Group (TCG)
  • Extended Product lifecycle, often over 15 years and more
  • Secure updates of software and digital logic with low downtimes

The MPSoCs from the EG and EV subfamilies of AMD Zynq UltraScale MPSoC line-up come with an integrated GPU that enables HMI applications for a user friendly and responsive GUI.

Design Examples Description Device Support

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MPSoC for Safe train on-board technology

  • Quad Core Cortex A53 for simultaneous execution of PLC Runtimes, HMI and real time connectivity (like TSN or EtherCAT) with hardware acceleration.
  • The architecture enables far-reaching differentiation.
  • SW runtimes to match programming standards (e.g. IEC 61131

Zynq UltraScale+ CG, EG, EV MPSoC

Safety companion: AMD Artix 7


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Integrated Video Surveillance  

  • Solution with Sensor interface, video encoder, Image Signal Processing and with accelerated xNN inference engine.
  • Complete cybersecurity solution stack available (3rd party).
  • Ideal for distributed surveillance on-board and wayside.
Zynq UltraScale+ CG, EG, EV MPSoC

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Integrated Control for inverters

  • For motor control and traction management
  • For interworking with high performance power stages (Silicon Carbide for example)
  • Adaptable to sensors and all encoder protocols thanks to Programmable Logic
  • Industrial Network Interfaces including TSN

AMD Spartan 7, Artix 7

AMD Artix UltraScale+

AMD Zynq 7000, Zynq 7000S

Zynq UltraScale+ CG, EG, EV MPSoC


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TSN Subsystem for AMD SoC

  • Customer configurable IP Core for industrial TSN applications and two external ports with support for all relevant protocols: IEEE 802.1Qbv, 802.1AS, 802.1Qci, 802.1Qbu, 802.1Qci, 802.1CB, 802.3br

AMD Zynq 7000, Zynq 7000S

Zynq UltraScale+ CG, EG, EV MPSoC


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Industrial Ethernet Slaves with Anybus IP from HMS

  • All relevant Industrial Ethernet Slaves – Profinet, EtherNet/IP, EtherCAT, Powerlink, and Modbus-TCP – are provided by Anybus IP from HMS.
Zynq 7000

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Industrial Ethernet Master

  • Controllers must contain a Master function for Industrial Networks.
  • Embedded ARM Cores in Zynq SoC and MPSoC are ideal for running the master protocols.
  • Data from the external network are forwarded to controller runtimes.

Zynq 7000

Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC

Documentation
Solutions Stack
iiot-hc-solutions-stack

Some Industrial and Healthcare IoT products need all elements of the AMD IIoT and HcIoT Solutions Stack, all need some. The AMD IIoT and HcIoT Solutions Stack is comprised of optimized AMD and Ecosystem building blocks and solutions used across Industrial and Healthcare IoT platforms. Starting from scratch is never something you will have to do with a AMD-based Industrial or Healthcare IoT system. Minimize development time and cost and maximize design reuse on your next Industrial or Healthcare IoT platform by exploring the different elements of the AMD IIoT and HcIoT Solutions Stack.