Development processes in the device, machine and plant engineering industry are under pressure. On the one hand, demands on control and visualisation electronics are constantly increasing and embedded computer kernels are becoming increasingly complex. On the other hand, globalisation is putting growing pressure on prices and is shortening the innovation cycle. Many companies therefore need to improve the efficiency of their development processes in order to remain competitive. Modularisation of the in-house, customer specific embedded computer technology from a single mould is a way to break out of the eternal circle of electronics development.
The advantages of modularisation are:
* A single module enables many variations of the whole.
* The more modules that are used, the greater the diversity.
* Leaving out or adding a module creates further variation.
* Old modules can be replaced to increase the lifetime of a modular platform.
* Modules reduce maintenance/replacement costs.
When constructing a modular system the modules need to be standardised and offer standard interfaces. Company internal standardisation of device, machine and system interfaces already has a number of advantages. But when the interfaces do not draw upon the company's own core competences, greater advantages are to be had by using standardised modules from external sources: development expenses are lower, time-to-market is reduced and design risks are significantly lower. In addition, such modules are available at competitive prices, thus reducing purchasing costs. OEMs, therefore, are able to develop series variants cost-effectively and significantly increase the speed of product cycles.
Excellent examples of successful modularisation are the platform strategies in the automotive industry (eg, at Volkswagen). PC technology is another example, incorporating modularity via expansion boards. Processor logic, however, is mostly monolithic. This is normally sufficient for applications that need the board's entire functionality, but not for custom designed boards that need their own interfaces. For such boards, it makes much more sense to modularise the processor and chipset logic in order to increase an application's performance spectrum beyond the processor socket without replacing the entire board. Computer-On-Modules offer the right components for every performance class.
ETX 3.0, COM Express, DIMM-PC, X-board and E2Brain are examples of standard Computer-On-Modules developed by Kontron that have acquired global acceptance, including PICMG standardisation in the case of COM Express. The worldwide de facto standard for PCI-based solutions is ETX 3.0. This module standard for PCI-based solutions even covers ISA expansion boards and at the same time supports the latest serial technology such as SATA and USB 2.0. The ETXexpress COM Express module and its smaller brother, the microETXexpress, as well as the latest nanoETXexpress are standards for PCI Express based solutions or for new designs based on PCI with advised migration to PCI Express.
These standards have become well established over the last few years, even though the market for complete, tailor made solutions is bigger in terms of number of units than the market for applications with Computer-On-Modules. Today, around 70% of the market is still occupied by full-custom-designs which means that Computer-On-Modules have captured around 30% of the full-custom design market (the market for merchant boards cannot be included in this breakdown). The use of modules will, however, significantly increase in the future, since PCI Express, multicore and the increasing integration of chipsets demand greater development time as well as multiprocessing.
Virtualisation of software applications will be the challenge in coming years. Market researchers such as the Butler Group predict that the virtualisation of IT infrastructures will be the dominant technology. By 2010 hardware-based virtualisation, para-virtualisation and virtual operating system environments will be state-of-the-art, not only within but also outside the server room. Companies need to prioritise these tasks as strategically important and significantly increase the development of modular, standard hardware in order to remain competitive.
Graphics: The first new bottleneck
And if that is not already enough of a challenge, further bottlenecks will appear due to the fact that users will want to implement increasingly complex graphic technology. This trend will arise from the increasing spread of HDTV and high-resolution digital cameras etc, that already make high-resolution technology affordable for industrial applications. Another factor influencing this trend is the increased use of graphic generating processes in industry. These will become affordable once processing power increases, enabling penetration of a broad, mass market.
Quality management via cost-effective industrial optical systems is a mega trend. Radiology is also undergoing increasing automation. These are just two fields of development for high-resolution graphic technology. A large number of machines and systems will be equipped with maintenance interfaces that, for example, are connected online via a high-resolution camera to a central helpdesk and that can display in parallel high-end 4D animations from the maintenance manual. This requires not only high performance that will become affordable in the near future, but also extremely fast graphics. This is why Kontron has developed a new standard for embedded high-end graphics that, together with XGI, was published as an open standard recently: the new Universal Graphics Module standard (UGM).
UGM has been developed especially for long term available high-end PCI graphics. The new UGM standard is an economical option for high-end embedded graphics requiring a short time to market. This is made possible by the use of interchangeable and scalable standard modules. XGI and Kontron have made the UGM graphics module specification freely available to third party vendors. In the future, the specification and use of the UGM brand will be controlled by the forthcoming UGM interest group, whose independent development of the specification will particularly benefit users.
The main target industries for high-end embedded graphics are medical and industrial imaging, gaming and entertainment machines, POS/POI terminals, commercial outdoor broadcasting, public facilities and high-end residential gateways. Unlike conventional graphics cards that are plugged in at 90° to the baseboard, UGMs are connected parallel to the baseboard. This saves space and thereby allows for extremely flat and very scalable designs. Even more importantly for users, UGMs offer availability of at least three to five years and the graphics functions, including drivers, are particularly quick and easy to implement in custom designs.
Power management: the second new bottleneck
In addition to the mega trend in high-end graphics for embedded applications, power management is also a field of development for modular embedded applications. This is particularly important for mobile devices that, thanks to increasingly integrated and thereby energy saving technology, will offer longer battery life and thereby higher levels of acceptance.
But is power management a core competence of OEMs? No. Power management is a solution that can also be bought. Take, for example, the SMART Battery Management Platform, MARS. MARS was developed for Computer-On-Module designs, but it can also be used for every other customer-specific design. In addition to management interfaces for intelligent batteries (SMART), the modular reference design also offers helpful power features such as an extended input voltage range eg, for industrial applications or in-vehicle PCs, connections for all ATX voltages as well as fall-back battery support for online battery changes. In the first instance, MARS will be offered as a complete evaluation board including the appropriate COMs. The Intellectual Property (IP) in the form of layout and circuit data (eg, in OrCAD) for individual solutions can be inserted into the baseboard layout via a copy and paste process.
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