Pulse
Size, scale and custom flexibility
By Lewis - 25 September 2023
Advantech-Innocore’s Edward Price and Craig Stapleton outline the company’s forthcoming product line-up at G2E Las Vegas, discuss the latest market trends and bring us up to speed on the implementation of AI in the gaming sector.
What’s exciting you about the upcoming G2E show in Las Vegas? And what can visitors to the booth expect to see from Advantech-Innocore?
Craig: We’re very excited about being back in Vegas next month for the G2E show. We’ll have our usual booth and an array of products from Advantech. Highlights include two new DPX® platforms that we’ll be announcing at the show, the DPX S455 and DPX M266.
The DPX S455 is the latest release in our very popular S-Series family of platforms, an all-in-one scalable platform that’s GLI compliant for slot machines. It features the latest Intel® chipset, the 12th, 13th generation Intel Core iCPUs, so it offers a wide range of performance on the CPU side, from Pentium right through to Core i9 CPUs on the platform. It’s also scalable on the graphics side with internal graphics in the chipset, which also allows you to fit a discrete graphics card via the X16 graphics card slot.
Switching to the M-Series, we have a new AMD board, which is based on AMD’s R2000, which is our M266. M-Series stands for Modular Multimedia, it’s our family of products for customers who don’t need the full complement of gaming I.O. and security that you get with our other families of products. The M-Series is for customers that have their own I.O., or we create modular I.O. to meet the requirements of the application.
In addition to the new S- and M-Series products, we also have an upgrade to our LED controller. We have a new operating mode that’s utilising an industry open-source project called Fade Candy, which has been developed for artists who want to design LED lighting installations using this technology. We’ve built this compatibility into our LED controller enabling anyone familiar with Fade Candy to utilise it through our LED controller in a specific mode in addition to the original mode.
We’ll also have our usual array of graphics cards from AMD and Nvidia alongside our in-house manufactured Intel® Arc™ graphics cards, which are noteworthy because the cards are 100 per cent designed and manufactured by Advantech engineers in our own factory. Manufacturing in-house provides gaming customers with a solid platform for high-performance graphics and the kind of longevity, revision control, and customisation they need. So, for example, if a customer wants different video output combinations, we can do that. If they want different sizes and shapes, maybe they want their thermal solution modified, we can achieve this because the cards are 100 per cent designed and manufactured by Advantech.
We’ll also have additional solutions from Advantech’s product divisions, including: retail and hospitality products, kiosks, POS, and tablets, and, due to our collaboration with Microsoft as a premier level partner, we’ll be highlighting Microsoft’s products for embedded computing and gaming at the G2E show.
What have been the characteristics of 2023 thus far? If you had to summarise this year in context to 2022 and the pandemic years, what trends have you identified, and how are they informing your plans for the remainder of this year into next?
Edward: The figures demonstrate the robust nature of our industry, which is great to see. In 2022, we saw a very strong recovery. Our numbers bounced back following the pandemic and 2023 has continued this trend. In fact, the bounce back has been stronger than we might have expected. We’ve seen this reflected by the majority of customers in practically every region, which is a good sign for the industry.
I do believe that Advantech-Innocore’s performance, in particular our supply performance in 2021 and 2022, has further strengthened our relationship with customers and created new wins. Customers have focused on resilience in their supply chains and the pandemic highlighted that importance.
All manufacturers experienced increased component costs and lead time delays in recent years, but our size and purchasing power has enabled us to secure the best allocation possible, which helps to keep our customers’ supply lines moving. We’ve achieved this through a huge increase in stock levels, particularly on the component side of our business, and we’re also recruiting dozens more staff to our supply chain department.
The other trend worth emphasising is the change in priority for our customers, who are looking for partners with strong purchasing power, in-house manufacturing, geopolitical resilience, and financial strength. These topics are foremost in the questions we’re being asked from customers and Advantech has strong answers. We have more than 90 offices around the world, so we’re located on the doorstep of our customers and, at the same time, we’re investing heavily in new facilities.
I was in Taiwan two weeks ago at our headquarters where we’ve just finished our third phase campus development, which is a new six-storey factory facility. With this facility and our plants in China and Japan we now have a total of 1.8 million square feet of manufacturing facility. To look forward to the next decade of our growth next year we’re starting a new extension and installation of an additional SMT line (Surface Mount Technology) at our Japanese factory.
We’ve also broken ground on our new headquarters in California for our US staff along with a sub-assembly plant. And then in 2024, we’re intending to start the build of another 10 floor factory in Taiwan with the aim of opening by 2026. So, I believe all these points really helped us through 2021-22 and supported our customers, which in turn drove impetus for the bounce back and the growth we’re seeing right now.
What markets are you especially excited for as upcoming opportunities, and which have provided the most interest this year and look set to develop further into 2024?
Craig: From a product standpoint, probably our most successful product in the last 12 months, as far as new interest, and samples we shipped, is our DPX-J100, a product we launched at the last G2E show, which is specifically designed to be very cost effective. We designed it from the ground up to ensure that the bill of materials was as low as possible, which has opened new markets for us, both geographically and in terms of gaming segments.
In the US markets, the pull tab, skill-based, charitable, and bingo markets, etc. which are very cost sensitive, we’ve seen a migration from very low-end, low-cost platforms. This has been driven by factors such as tighter regulations upon these sectors, but also due to market maturity as OEMs seek to advance the look and feel of their games, realising they need higher levels of technology, but still wanting an affordable sticker price. This has opened new markets for Advantech in both the US, Latin America, and Asia. Rather than ‘new’ markets opening, it’s been a product price point that’s allowed access to existing markets.
Geographically, we’re also tracking and working on several initiatives and activities in Brazil, positioning ourselves for when that market takes off, ensuring that we’re in the right place the moment the new government changes things in favour of the gaming industry.
How is Advantech preparing for the ‘scorching hot’ then ‘freezing cold’ market potential of Brazil?
Edward: Advantech is in a good position to help both domestic and international customers in the Brazilian market. The reason I say that is we already have an office and assembly plant in Sao Paulo. We have experts on the ground in Brazil, with a team that’s intimately knowledgeable when it comes to importing products, assembling them, and shipping to embedded customers across other verticals within that region.
We have the infrastructure and the expertise necessary to navigate the importation, taxation and administrative challenges that come with the market. So, I think we’re in a really good position. We are also working upon creating local ecosystems with software developers and looking forward to the market opening for gaming in the coming year.
What else is on the Advantech-Innocore roadmap as we look towards the end of the year, into next and the final London ICE show?
Craig: The roadmap at present is focused on the two products we’ll showcase at G2E for the S- and M-Series. We recently refreshed our other two product families, E and J Series, so it’ll be towards the latter half of next year before we seek to add to that line-up. However, we are planning another M-Series addition with Intel at a date ‘to be announced’ next year. We also have a series of ancillary products that we’re always working upon, such as our LED controller and I.O. modules for the M-Series.
We’ve seen lots of interest in AI from chip manufacturers and as a topic for discussion within the gaming space. How do you seen the integration of AI affecting the gaming industry?
Craig: It’s very interesting to see how applications of AI are being applied in so many different industries and affecting all areas of our professional and even personal lives. I think the casino industry is certainly no different and there’s a lot of areas where AI can be brought to bear. In both online and land-based gaming, you have large numbers of players interacting with computers, generating massive amounts of data that can be harvested, gathered, and used to optimise the whole process. So, I know there’s already a lot of initiatives to apply AI within the gaming sector.
From the Advantech standpoint, we already have a lot of the building blocks because we work in so many different industries. We’re in factory automation, we’re in robotics, retail, hospitality, healthcare imaging, and all manner of industrial computing. So, from our product portfolio, which has been refined over the last year, we already fit the requirements of AI. And that’s across the whole board.
We have multi-processor Xeon servers, which can utilise the latest Nvidia RTX CUDA graphics cards for data centre number crunching and analytic applications. We also have products at the other end of the range that are used for “edge AI”, being utilised on the factory or the casino floor via slot machines, gathering data in the real world and passing it to the AI analytical systems.
Edward: It’s very early stages, but I saw AI demonstrated at our Taiwan factory during my recent visit. AI is currently being utilised on the shop floor to check for issues in the production line. The AI can be interrogated to quality check products on the production floor and can be used to identify problems that need to be addressed.
For example, you can ask the AI to identify the number of failures we’ve experienced in the LAN connector on a board over a six-month period. The AI will interrogate the database and give a result, so you know if action is needed. Is there a recurring problem or is this a one-off? I believe AI is going to be implemented at all levels, from the factory to the casino floor and at Advantech we’re already using AI to improve the quality and yield rate of our products.
What have been the highlights of 2023 thus far and have you seen any dynamic changes in the market this year?
Edward: We’re really pleased with our progress this year. The forecasted results for 2023 look really strong, but the determining factor is the resilience and the bounce back of the market. We’re feeling resilient because we’re seeing this result from many countries and many customers, not just one region.
We’ve also got a great experienced team here at Advantech-Innocore that has a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the industry. Many of our team members have been with us for several decades, creating what I believe is a truly industry focused division with all the benefits that come with being part of the size and global footprint of Advantech. I think we’re in a strong place. 2024 and 2025 are looking robust already and we are very much look forward to meeting all our customers and partners at G2E in a few weeks’ time.
Craig: Yes, please come see us at G2E. We’ll have more ‘Advantech-ers’ at the show than ever before, we’ve been recruiting in our product division and everyone wants to come to G2E. So come see us [booth #3230] and you’ll find someone to talk to, I’m sure.
