Hardware Hierarchy

Fleet

A fleet is a group of machines that are managed and operated as a single unit often used for testing and development purposes; they allow for the simultaneous testing of multiple configurations of hardware and software. Fleets can also be used for production purposes, such as running a robot delivery service or performing Hardware in the Loop testing in the cloud.

Examples:

  1. A group of testbeds for an autonomous vehicle

  2. A group of drones comprised of multiple generations of hardware in the same region

Currently, the maximum number of fleets supported by Chassy is six for a single workspace.

Machine

A machine is a single hardware unit with a specific hardware and software configuration. Machines can be robots, testbeds, virtual machine testbeds, or even embedded devices. Each machine within a fleet has its own unique IP address and hostname.

Each machine has a set of supported runtimes recognized by Chassy. For example, if Chassy detects that a machine is capable of running docker containers, then this will be indicated in the Chassy Console. This is useful for ensuring compatibility between artifacts and the machines intended to run them.

At the moment, the designations specify the following:

  • the machine can execute binaries

  • the machine can run docker containers

Examples:

  1. A mobile sidewalk delivery robot containing an ARM SoC auxiliary compute (chip) and Intel x86 based main compute (another chip)

  2. A drone powered by an Nvidia Jetson Nano (chip)

Chip

A chip is a semiconductor device that defines a machine's hardware and firmware configuration. Chips contain one or more processing units, such as CPUs, GPUs, memory, and other components. Each machine in a fleet can be based on one or more chips. This enables Chassy to reason about binary and image compatibility for packages uploaded to the Chassy index intended to run on specific Machines.

Examples:

  1. Nvidia Jetson Orin AGX

  2. Intel 12900K with Nvidia RTX 4000

  3. Raspberry Pi3

Relationships between Fleets, Chips, and Machines

  • A fleet is a collection of machines.

  • A machine is a single hardware unit with a specific hardware and software configuration.

  • A chip defines a machine's hardware and software configuration.

  • Each machine in a fleet can be based on one chip

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