Hardware Design and Thermal Management of Video Accelerator Cards in IOT Applications

This paper demonstrates the hardware design and thermal solution of video accelerator cards in the M.2 and mini PCI express (mPCIe) form factor. The video accelerator cards have video processing units (VPU) which act as extra graphics engine in addition to the processor in a system. It is the first in industry that video accelerator card can be designed in such small form factor without compromising performance. As the accelerator cards are small, the board design can be of high challenge to ensure essential components and layout routing are done correctly to comply with design rules. In addition, high power density on the accelerator cards requires good thermal design and power management to ensure the temperature on the VPU does not exceed specification during intended operation. The performance improvement on a host system equipped with the accelerator cards will also be shown to prove the business acumen.