Edge Computing Manufacturing Iot FAQ & Answers

5G URLLC (Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication) targets less than 1 millisecond packet latency with 99.999% reliability. This is defined in 3GPP Release 15. For comparison, 4G LTE achieves approximately 4ms latency under Release 14. Release 16 improved URLLC to sub-millisecond latency. Future 6G targets less than 0.1ms with 99.99999% reliability.

MQTT defines three Quality of Service levels: QoS 0 (At Most Once) - fire and forget, no acknowledgment, fastest but may lose messages. QoS 1 (At Least Once) - guaranteed delivery but may have duplicates, uses 2-step handshake. QoS 2 (Exactly Once) - guaranteed single delivery using 4-step handshake (PUBLISH, PUBREC, PUBREL, PUBCOMP), highest overhead but no duplicates or losses.

NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin delivers up to 275 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of AI performance. It features a 12-core Arm Cortex-A78AE CPU, 2,048-core NVIDIA Ampere GPU, 64GB LPDDR5 memory with 204.8 GB/s bandwidth. Power is configurable between 15W and 60W. This provides 8x the performance of Jetson AGX Xavier in the same form factor.

K3s minimum requirements are 512MB RAM and 1 CPU core. The K3s binary is under 100MB (approximately 40MB) with typical memory consumption around 250MB. For practical edge deployments, recommend at least 2 CPU cores and 2GB RAM. K3s requires an SSD for optimal database performance.

TSN achieves deterministic microsecond transfer times with time synchronization between nodes in tens of nanoseconds. IEEE 802.1AS provides sub-microsecond precision as a constrained subset of IEEE 1588. For mission-critical industrial applications, TSN can achieve sub-microsecond latency using IEEE 802.1Qbv (time-aware shapers) combined with IEEE 802.1Qbu (frame preemption).

OPC UA returns error code Bad_TcpMessageTooLarge (0x80800000) when message sizes exceed configured limits. The description is 'The size of the message specified in the header is too large.' The max response message size can be configured to a higher value in both client and server settings.

NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano delivers up to 67 TOPS of AI performance at $249 (Orin Nano Super Developer Kit). Power consumption is configurable between 7W and 25W. This provides 140x the performance of the original Jetson Nano and 1.7x improvement over the previous Orin Nano generation. Suitable for running vision transformers, LLMs, and vision-language models at the edge.

Use QoS 0 for high-frequency telemetry data that is only relevant for a short time and is overwritten frequently. Use QoS 1 for status information and data essential to functionality where handling duplicates is acceptable. QoS 2 is rarely needed in IIoT due to the 4-step handshake overhead; only use when duplicate avoidance is critical and latency is not a concern.

NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX delivers up to 157 TOPS of AI performance in the smallest Jetson form factor. Power is configurable between 10W and 40W. Available in 16GB and 8GB memory variants. Positioned between the entry-level Orin Nano (67 TOPS) and high-end AGX Orin (275 TOPS).

Traditional base station grant access in 5G can add latencies of up to 11ms. To achieve URLLC targets, 5G systems use grant-free uplink access where base stations reserve capacity for uplink transmissions, dramatically reducing end-to-end latency to meet the sub-1ms target.

Typical control cycles in factory automation range from 100 to 1000 milliseconds with a jitter requirement of less than 1 millisecond. Local industrial production domains (robotic arms, unmanned guided vehicles) using wired Ethernet TSN systems achieve latency in the tens of microseconds.

TSN is built on four pillars: 1) Time synchronization - precise clock synchronization across devices to microsecond level. 2) Guaranteed end-to-end latency - bounded worst-case latency for critical traffic. 3) Reliability - zero congestion loss for critical data through resource reservation. 4) Resource management - scheduling and shaping techniques for deterministic delivery.

MQTT is more bandwidth-efficient than OPC UA, especially for short payloads and limited bandwidth scenarios. OPC UA increases network traffic more than MQTT for large data sets. However, OPC UA provides robust built-in security and encryption capabilities, making it better suited for sophisticated industrial applications requiring security. MQTT excels at lightweight data transmission.

AWS IoT Greengrass requires a minimum of 500 MB local storage space to use AWS-provided sample machine learning components. The December 2024 release (v2.14.0) introduced Greengrass nucleus lite - a lightweight runtime with reduced memory footprint for resource-constrained devices like smart home hubs, smart meters, and edge AI applications.

NVIDIA Jetson Thor delivers up to 2070 FP4 TFLOPS of AI compute with 128GB of memory. Power is configurable between 40W and 130W. This provides over 7.5x higher AI compute than Jetson AGX Orin with 3.5x better energy efficiency. Designed for physical AI and advanced robotics applications. Expected release in 2025.

5G URLLC supports industry standard automation protocols including PROFINET RT and PROFIsafe. It delivers very low latency with strict latency bounds and required guarantee levels to avoid triggering safety stops in automated systems. Many industrial real-time applications require end-to-end latency of 10 milliseconds or less.

IEEE 802.1AS provides time synchronization for TSN with sub-microsecond precision. It is a tightly constrained subset of IEEE 1588 (Precision Time Protocol) with extensions to support synchronization over WiFi (IEEE 802.11). This enables deterministic communication by ensuring all network devices share a common time reference.

IEEE 802.1Qbv specifies time-aware shapers (TAS) for TSN. A TAS divides transmission into cycles, with each switch potentially having different TAS schedules. This guarantees message latency through a network by controlling exactly when each traffic class can transmit. Combined with IEEE 802.1Qbu frame preemption, it enables deterministic low-latency delivery.