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Arm Edge AI Technology Powers SpaceTech’s Next Generation Smart Cities

SpaceTech transforms building management with Arm-based servers and Edge AI, enhancing safety, sustainability, efficiency—for a smarter resident experience.
By Chloe Ma, VP, China GTM for IoT Line of Business, Arm

For SpaceTech, managing buildings and communities at scale means leveraging innovative solutions in public safety, automation, and sustainability. As a subsidiary of China Vanke Co., Ltd., overseeing more than 8 million residential units and 2,000 commercial buildings, SpaceTech integrates Edge AI to boost safety, sustainability, and operational efficiency while enhancing the resident experience. 

AI-driven management and energy optimization for smarter cities

SpaceTech is strengthening its commitment to sustainable, innovative building management by integrating smart technologies across its billion-square-meter portfolio. With a blend of property management expertise, service quality, and advanced tech solutions, it has become China’s leading space management provider.  
 
SpaceTech needed a high-performance edge AI server to handle the increasing data traffic from smart devices, prioritizing performance while being constrained by power limits. A key challenge is waste management, where AI categorizes waste and triggers service tickets when bins are full.   

Additionally, the complexity of managing legacy building systems—such as lighting, air conditioning, and access control—presents a challenge, as these systems often function in isolation. This lack of interoperability further fragmented the ecosystem, as devices from different manufacturers often couldn’t communicate with each other.

Moving from x86 edge servers to Arm-based servers

To improve performance, energy efficiency, and sustainability, SpaceTech partnered with Ampere Computing to explore a transition from x86 edge servers to Ampere Altra family Arm-based servers. Switching to Ampere could deliver significant advantages over x86, including 2.5x better performance per rack, 2.8x lower power consumption, and a 3x smaller footprint. This transition aligns with the broader industry trend of moving x86 code to Arm processors for high-performance, power-efficient computing in cloud-native and open-source workloads like PyTorch, MongoDB, and Nginx. 
 
A proof of concept compared the performance of Alibaba’s Qwen-VL Vision Language Model (VLM) on Ampere’s Arm-based servers to x86 servers, revealing significant energy savings without sacrificing AI capabilities. Ampere also provides dedicated AI libraries, including two optimized quantization methods to improve performance by 1.5–2x while maintaining model size and perplexity. For example, Q4_K_4 quantization increases prompt processing speed by 1.6x compared to Q4_K_M with the Qwen2-7b-instruct model. Since the code ran smoothly on Arm with minimal adjustments, ecosystem compatibility was not an issue. 

The two most critical components are video decoding, often the primary data source, and AI inference, which generates actionable results. With 1080p video streams running at 25 frames per second and multiple inference models operating in parallel, the Arm-based Ampere solution was 2.6 times faster, far outperforming the x86-based system.  

The prospect of using Arm-based sensors and edge devices would allow SpaceTech to automate building operations, improving sustainability and enhancing the resident experience. For example, motion sensors detect room occupancy, allowing lights and HVAC systems to turn off when not in use.  
 
AI further refines this process by learning occupancy patterns, preemptively adjusting systems to ensure spaces are comfortable when needed. Surveillance systems powered by edge AI monitor elevators to prevent unauthorized scooter use and littering in public areas, automatically generating service requests when issues arise. Integrating facial recognition with delivery services like Meituan streamlines building access from cloud and internet services all the way to the edge and community access endpoint, giving delivery personnel seamless entry to gated communities while ensuring security. 

Arm-based servers to power SpaceTech’s smart city infrastructure

Ampere’s Arm-based servers are poised to play a crucial role in SpaceTech’s smart city infrastructure. These servers enhance energy efficiency, reduce the need for cooling, and offer a sustainable alternative to traditional x86 systems.  
 
Cameras, sensors, and other devices across SpaceTech’s network could soon rely on Arm processors to efficiently handle endpoint AI workloads. They have also streamlined various building systems by running multiple software applications in virtual containers on an edge server cluster, which they plan to transition to Arm. This approach integrates previously siloed systems—such as lighting, HVAC, air quality, and access control—into a unified data lake, enabling seamless operation and optimization. 
 
Through these initiatives, SpaceTech is transforming how they manage urban spaces. In addition to reducing energy consumption, they’re enhancing sustainability across their portfolio of residential and commercial buildings. 

Powering smarter urban management with edge cloud native platform

To help manage 1 billion square meters of urban space with smart technology, SpaceTech developed an “Edge Cloud Native” platform where every device—be it a camera, sensor, or gateway—functions like a micro-cloud. This infrastructure enables real-time AI decision-making and efficient building management, reducing operational costs, power demands, and environmental impact.   

As SpaceTech continues working with Ampere Computing, it aims to replace legacy x86 infrastructure with Arm-powered edge servers. This transition will further improve compute efficiency, reduce noise and cooling needs in edge rooms, and scale AI capabilities without requiring GPU-heavy hardware.   

The future of SpaceTech’s urban management with Arm

With China’s extensive developer ecosystem trained on Arm architecture, SpaceTech will be well-positioned to extend its smart city solutions, setting new standards for intelligent urban management across China, and potentially beyond. By adopting Arm technology and Ampere Arm-based edge servers, SpaceTech is revolutionizing urban management by seamlessly integrating AI, sustainability, and efficiency into its operations.  

This partnership addresses the complexities of large-scale property management while setting a new standard for connected smart cities and offering a model for other developers to harness the potential of intelligent buildings with the help of Edge AI.  

Explore how Edge AI is transforming IoT by enhancing smart cities, industries, and retail by unlocking possibilities as deployments scale. 
 
Check out more Ampere solutions helping to revolutionize AI inferencing workloads. 

Hear SpaceTech CTO Sean Ding talk about the technology behind this enormous smart cities revolution.

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