This architecture establishes each factory as a computing “edge,” enabling the inference process to occur on the factory floor, using lighter-weight computing resources. What’s more, Seagate knew the cost of bandwidth to move so much data to and from the factory would be prohibitive, so it developed a parallel reference architecture called Seagate Edge RX. Seagate deployed this solution in a machine vision defect inspection system used in hard disk read-and-write head manufacturing in one of Seagate’s factory sites and is planning to scale the solution to other sites.īecause the anomaly patterns in question were constantly changing, rules-based AI was not an option.
Over the course of a year, the companies built a solution that could capture and analyze images of drive heads that are just molecules from the surface of the spinning disk. “It’s like a 747 flying inches from the ground at 100 times the speed of sound,” said Srinivasan. Bringing this idea to life for a single factory would require the ability to process 17 million images a day, and to perform inference at 20 positions per second. The first step the companies took was to get an idea of the amount of data in play. The company started talking with NVIDIA and Hewlett Packard Enterprise about the business problem. “If there are any anomalies, we’re going to end up with poor yield later on, and we wouldn’t know that until the long process is completed.”Īt first, Seagate searched for a product that could help with image-based anomaly detection in a high-yield manufacturing environment, but there was nothing commercially available. “Mistakes are costly,” said Raghavan Srinivasan, senior director of global marketing at Seagate, which makes more disk drives than any other manufacturer.
Even the smallest errors can lead to product flaws. For example, it takes 1,400 steps just to manufacture the drive head. The disk drive manufacturing process is incredibly complex. It is weird to hear the two names together but Hard disk drive manufacturer Seagate is using GPU-powered AI and machine learning to perform anomaly detection of recording head slider images so it can spot potential problems sooner.Įnsuring the quality of each of the millions of hard disk drives is but not easy.
0 kommentar(er)
