Whether it’s the increasing demands on control and visualisation electronics or the evermore- complex embedded computer kernels, development processes are feeling the pressure. Add in globalisation’s effect on price points and shortened innovation cycles, and it’s easy to see why companies must improve the efficiency of their development processes to stay competitive.

One way to break out of the eternal circle of electronics development is by modularising the in-house, customer- specific, embedded computer technology from a single mould. Modularisation separates a monolithic whole into pieces called modules, components, or building blocks. You can reap numerous benefits by going modular:

• A single module enables many variations of the whole.
• The more modules 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 offers a number of advantages.

However, when the interfaces don’t draw upon the company’s own core competencies, greater advantages are possible when using standardised modules from external sources. For example, development expenses are lower, time-to-market is reduced, and design risks are lower. In addition, such modules are available at competitive prices. OEMs are able to develop series variants cost-effectively and increase the speed of product cycles. Moreover, listing the modules reduces the time and energy spent on documentation.

Examples of successful modularisation can be seen in the platform strategies used throughout the automotive industry (e.g., at Volkswagen). PC technology is another example—it incorporates modularity via expansion boards.

Processor logic, however, is mostly monolithic. This is usually 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 more sense to modularise the processor and chipset logic 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 performapplications ance 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 (COM Express).

The de facto standard for PCIbased solutions is ETX 3.0. This module even covers ISA expansion boards and supports the latest serial technology (e.g., SATA or USB 2.0). The ETXexpress COM Express module and its smaller brother, the microETXexpress, plus the latest nanoETXexpress (Fig. 1), are standards for PCI Express-based solutions or for new PCI designs with advised migration to PCI Express.

These standards have become wellestablished 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 can’t be included in this breakdown).

The use of modules will, however, significantly increase in the future. That’s because PCI Express, multicore, and the increasing integration of chipsets demand greater development time as well as multiprocessing. Virtualisation of software applications will become the main challenge in coming years.

Market researchers like the Butler Group predict that the virtualisation of IT infrastructures will be the dominant technology. By 2010, hardwarebased virtualisation, para-virtualisation, and virtual operating-system environments will be state-of-the-art— inside and outside the server room. Companies need to prioritise these tasks as strategically important and significantly increase the development of modular, standard hardware to remain competitive.

GRAPHICS: THE FIRST NEW BOTTLENECK

Further bottlenecks will emerge because users will want to implement increasingly complex graphic technology. This trend will arise from the widening spread of HDTV and high-resolution digital cameras, etc., which already makes high-resolution technology affordable for industrial applications.

Another factor influencing this trend is the greater use of graphicgenerating processes throughout industry. These will become affordable once processing power increases, enabling penetration of a broad, mass market.

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