Taiwanese firm Advantech has launched a compact edge system designed for rapid AI adoption.

The Air-120 is a compact edge AI inference system powered by the Intel Atom x7433RE, Core i3-N305, N97 processor and the Hailo-8 AI accelerator. This configuration delivers scalable performance with up to eight cores and up to 26Tops of AI computing power, enabling high-throughput, low-latency inference with a balance of performance, power efficiency and cost for lightweight vision AI applications.

Designed for industrial environments, it supports an operating temperature from -20 to +60˚C, and complies with IEC 61000-6-4 and IEC 61000-6-2 EMC standards for heavy industry.

To streamline edge AI deployment, it is bundled with Advantech’s Edge AI SDK, EdgeBMC and the Hailo AI software suite. These tools provide benchmarking utilities, runtime SDKs, and remote monitoring and management capabilities, simplifying model development, conversion, optimisation and deployment. Target applications include public safety monitoring, AI-based security inspection and workforce safety.

The Air-120 combines low power consumption, dedicated AI acceleration and industrial-grade durability, making it a cost-effective, easy-to-deploy edge AI inference system that integrates seamlessly into existing infrastructure. Its form factor (176 by 112.35 by 66.4mm) houses robust AI computing capabilities, remote management features, and more than 12 versatile IO options to support vision cameras, equipment control and communication interfaces.

IO interfaces include 2.5GbE, 1GbE, two COM, two USB 3.2, two USB 2.0, optional dual Can bus, and three M.2 expansion slots. One of the Ethernet ports supports EdgeBMC for out-of-band remote system management. The internal M.2 slots enable integration of the Hailo-8 AI module, storage devices, wifi and 4G LTE modules. Its thermal design ensures stable performance of the Hailo-8 during high-load AI workloads, such as Yolo v3-based object detection, preventing overheating and improving reliability.

The system integrates the Hailo-8 AI acceleration module with a suite of development tools to enable rapid AI deployment. The Edge AI SDK, integrated with the HailoRT runtime SDK, enables fast setup and streamlined development workflows. For AI model conversion, the Hailo AI software suite includes:

• Model Zoo: A collection of ready-to-use models
• Dataflow compiler: For efficient cross-platform model conversion 
• Tappas toolkit: A library of pre-trained models for applications such as multi-stream object detection, distance segmentation, classification and pose estimation

To support development, the Edge AI SDK offers benchmarking tools and AI reference samples to evaluate hardware performance. In addition, built-in support for EdgeBMC enables out-of-band remote management, simplifying monitoring and maintenance for scalable edge AI deployment.

With more than 8600 employees worldwide and a 40-year track record, Advantech (www.advantech.com) specialises in embedded AIoT.