October 2025 — Food production is becoming one of the most dynamic areas for machine vision innovation. Automated inspection systems now detect defects, contaminants, and irregularities at speeds no human could match. They help manufacturers deliver safer, more consistent products while improving yield and reducing waste.
Companies such as Active Silicon are helping to power this shift with high-performance vision computers designed for continuous industrial use. Built to handle vast streams of image data, these systems form the processing backbone of many automated inspection lines, ensuring precision and uptime in demanding food environments.
Precision and Speed on the Line
In high-throughput food facilities, vision systems must process thousands of units per minute. This requires fast, deterministic image transfer, a role long served by interfaces such as Camera Link and CoaXPress.
Camera Link remains a proven and stable choice for deterministic transfers with minimal overhead. CoaXPress offers higher bandwidth and longer cable runs, which is especially valuable in large production areas where flexibility and distance matter as much as speed.
Frame grabbers bridge the cameras and processing units, capturing high-bandwidth data and transferring it reliably into system memory. Many modern grabbers also handle preprocessing, triggering, and synchronization directly on the board, reducing CPU load and maintaining consistent throughput across shifts.
Vision Computers Built for Industrial Demands
A reliable food inspection system depends on more than fast image transfer. Machine vision computers must be engineered for continuous operation, balancing power, scalability, and durability.
Multi-core CPUs still serve most applications well, but GPU acceleration is becoming essential for AI-based inspection and defect classification. Generous memory and solid-state storage ensure smooth handling of high-resolution, high-frame-rate data, while industrial-grade components guarantee long lifecycles and resilience under harsh conditions.
To simplify deployment, many manufacturers now rely on pre-validated, modular systems. Active Silicon’s Oncilla range, for example, integrates Camera Link, CoaXPress, or CoaXPress-over-Fiber frame grabbers with Intel Core i7 processors and scalable DDR5 memory. These systems are designed for sustained 24/7 operation, making them well-suited to multi-line food production environments where consistency is critical.
Software: Unlocking the System’s Potential
Modern inspection depends on software as much as hardware. GPU-accelerated libraries and AI frameworks are now essential for processing and interpreting camera data in real time.
For tasks such as foreign-object detection or product grading, optimized software improves accuracy and yield by reducing false rejects. Systems such as Oncilla include Active Silicon’s ActiveSDK and ActiveCapture tools, which provide sample applications, optimized libraries, and compatibility with leading machine vision software platforms including Cognex VisionPro, MVTec HALCON, and Common Vision Blox.
This broad interoperability allows engineers to integrate vision systems quickly into existing workflows and scale them efficiently across multiple production lines.
Automation Meets Assurance
Machine vision is now central to the modern food factory, improving traceability, ensuring compliance, and reducing waste through smarter, automated decisions.
As AI and machine vision continue to converge, interfaces such as CoaXPress and integrated, ready-to-deploy vision systems will remain vital. Companies that prioritise modularity and lifecycle support in their setups will be best placed to scale these technologies sustainably.
Learn more:
Visit Active Silicon to explore the Oncilla machine vision computer range and technical resources on Camera Link and CoaXPress integration.
