Today's development engineers of industrial products are
facing many challenges, for which they have to come up with innovative
solutions.
The microprocessor is at the heart of any modern embedded
system. With an average innovation cycle of six to twelve months for
Application Processors (AP) and System on Chips (SoCs), this is much shorter
than the required five to ten year lifecycle for the embedded market, making
the deployment of such technologies in embedded systems problematic if not
impossible.
Consumer technology drives customer expectations;
embedded systems that interact with people need to provide equivalent features
and interfaces.
Devices must be intuitive; people no longer want to read
user guides or manuals. 3D acceleration and multi touch support are mandatory
for the Graphical User Interface (GUI). High speed connectivity using
PCI-Express, SATA and Gigabit Ethernet coupled with multimedia interfaces such
as HDMI are all necessary to ensure products live up to customer expectations.
Designing complex computing platforms to meet the demands
of today’s end customers takes many man years and requires highly specific
expertise. To solve these challenges, development engineers have started to
deploy off-the-shelf COMs. By purchasing the embedded computing platform as a
complete, standardised subsystem, the development team can concentrate on the
application, reducing development costs, risks and time to market.
Hardware and software maintenance of the Computer on Module is managed
by the vendor, so the customer no longer has to worry about the lifecycle of
individual components, massively reducing redesign risks and product
maintenance overhead.
Another major advantage of choosing a computer module
from a pin and functional compatible module family is the scalability of the
end user product. By selecting the module that meets the requirements of
specific application, customers can deploy product variants which are
performance and price optimised for slightly different markets and segments.
For low to medium volume products, quite often a Embedded Computer on Module is
the only cost effective solution, achievable due to the economy of scale
leveraged by a large customer base deploying the same module. The cost benefit
of using COMs in an application can often be realised well into volumes of
several tens of thousands per year.
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