Lenovo ThinkEdge SE70 Announced

Lenovo has announced the ThinkEdge SE70, a powerful and flexible AI edge platform for the enterprise area and commercial businesses. Unveiled at the company’s annual TechWorld event, the SE70 is a rugged, purpose-built device designed to meet the expanding intelligent transformation needs for a range of industries, including logistics, transportation, hospitality, retail, security (particularly Layered license plate detection or facial recognition), healthcare, and manufacturing.

Lenovo has announced the ThinkEdge SE70, a powerful and flexible AI edge platform for the enterprise area and commercial businesses. Unveiled at the company’s annual TechWorld event, the SE70 is a rugged, purpose-built device designed to meet the expanding intelligent transformation needs for a range of industries, including logistics, transportation, hospitality, retail, security (particularly Layered license plate detection or facial recognition), healthcare, and manufacturing.

This is also Lenovo’s first NVIDIA Jetson offering. It specifically uses Xavier NX design, which is the world’s smallest AI supercomputer and is ideal for leveraging neural networks and addressing computer vision and machine learning.

Lenovo has been in the edge analytics for a while now. For example, we reviewed the ThinkCentre M90n-1 Nano IoT–a strong offering from Lenovo for those who need a monitoring IoT device that can handle harsh environments. Like with the SE70, Lenovo has put a lot into the design of the system, while refusing to skimp on key components.

Earlier this year, Lenovo released the SE30 and SE50, which were based on an Intel Core i5 (16GB RAM, LTE/5G) and Intel Core i7 (32GB RAM, Intel Movidius VPU), respectively.

Lenovo’s ThinkEdge Strategy

Lenovo believes that the majority of enterprise IT projects in the commercial space are using AI to improve their practices. For example, in retail, they are focused on customer-service experience or improving theft detection through surveillance. In manufacturing, it might be about improving quality assurance or helping with the safety of workers. Sometimes, it is very difficult to scale these, which is where Lenovo’s ThinkEdge strategy comes in.

With this technology, they are helping their customers shift their workloads and technologies further out to the edge where that data is being consumed. This not only helps organizations to drive down cost, but it helps with latency so they can make better business decisions.

The ThinkEdge SE70 is purpose-built to leverage computer vision (CV) applications for enterprises.  As such, Lenovo’s new edge solution is designed alongside Amazon Web Services (AWS), with a version of the SE70 offered with AWS Panorama Device SDK pre-installed. This will allow on-premises cameras to make predictions locally with higher accuracy and lower latency, meaning that their customers will have the ability to transform everyday IP cameras into ‘smart’ cameras.

The biggest benefit of AWS Panorama is how it autodetects your device (e.g., IP cameras) as soon as you connect it to your network. You can then log in to the AWS Panorama portal where you can see the device and start pushing down CV applications.

Moreover, with AWS Panorama, tasks that traditionally require a manual inspection to improve visibility of potential issues can now be automated. Lenovo indicates, for example, that this technology can track assets for optimizing operations in facilities and monitoring inventory levels on retail shelves–even in areas with limited internet bandwidth.

Lenovo ThinkEdge SE70 Design and Build

So what does it offer from a hardware standpoint? ThinkEdge SE70 uses a compact, fan-less chassis with vertically grated heat sync for the top panel. It supports extended temperatures from -20 to +60 degrees Celsius and an IP51 rating, the latter of which addresses potential issues with dust and moisture. With this reliable build and wide operating temperature range, the SE70 is certainly ideal for both 24/7 operation and severe-condition use cases.

One of the most important highlights of the SE70 is its upgradeable, modular design, allowing businesses to scale as they grow and get more complex.

On the front main panel, there is an audio port, one HDMI port for a local display visualization, slots for micro SD and SIM cards, four traditional USB3 ports, one USB-C port, and 4DI/4DO. There are also front LED lights for power, LAN, drive activity.

Turning around the device to the rear, you will see a configurable Serial IO, DC power (that can connect to an AC adaptor), and dual 2 GbE PoE ports (for the standard model). Lenovo also offers models with up to eight PoE ports (in a little bit larger 2L case vs. 1.6L standard), so you can connect eight separate cameras directly on the edge device without having to use a switch or supply power to each camera individually. This greatly consolidates the hardware needed at a given deployment and makes long term management easier.

It also has Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity with the ability to store up to 2TB of highspeed Gen4 PCIe storage.

NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX

The ThinkEdge SE70 is based on NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX platform, a production-ready, high-performance small form-factor that is cloud-managed for enhanced security. This also makes it easier for both training and deploying a variety of AI and machine learning models to the edge.

Xavier NX delivers up to 21 trillion operations/second (TOPS) of accelerated compute, runs modern neural networks in parallel, and processes data from multiple high-resolution sensors. Jetson Xavier NX also leverages NVIDIA CUDA-X. This comprehensive AI software stack is highly optimized and uses domain-specific libraries to help lessen complexity while improving time to market.

Lenovo ThinkEdge SE70 Specifications (standard model)

Its ruggedly-built design coupled with its processing power and flexible, future-proof configurations make the ThinkEdge SE70 ideal for smart networks that support real-time decision-making in new hybrid business models with advanced automation.

Lenovo ThinkEdge SE70 Availability

The Lenovo ThinkEdge SE70 is slated for a release in the first half of 2022 to select markets worldwide. While we’ve discussed a few form factors, the platform is extremely flexible and can be customized for a particular use case.

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