Hardware Blog

Whether it's an emergency responder robot, a remote sensor on a traffic light, or a telecommunications tower, embedded technology is finding its way into products that need to operate flawlessly at extreme temperatures and hold up in some of the most rugged environments on earth–and off of it. Although a growing range of applications often need durable embedded solutions, military and government projects require technology that can withstand especially harsh environments and temperatures while performing critical functions. Read more...

Best Practices for Routing VGA Signals in Multi-Core COM Express Solutions Read more...

Many space-limited embedded applications require significant processing performance and substantial I/O capabilities in a compact form factor. Enter COM Express. COM Express modules can serve as standalone boards by themselves or can be used as a processor mezzanine card. The COM Express board design allows you to swap one COM Express module for another whenever your design needs a performance upgrade. Read more...

Cooling rugged, high-performance embedded systems has always been a tough assignment. The Intel® Atom™ microprocessors with their incredibly low TDP (thermal design power) ease the task of cooling a system, but the conventional approach of relying on convection cooling with an appropriate heat sink bonded to the processor simply won’t work in extreme military and aerospace environments. Makers of single-board computers destined to be used in rugged environments have addressed this problem for years and their heat-extracting solutions are very instructive. Read more...

The Intel® 5100 MCH provides six x4 Gen 1 PCIe ports and the Intel® ICH9R provides an additional six x1 Gen 1 PCIe ports. These six x1 Gen 1 PCIe ports can also be configured as one x2 port and four x1 ports. Although all of these ports on the Intel® 5100 MCH and Intel® ICH9R are Gen 1 PCIe, these ports vary somewhat in their I/O performance. To maximize overall system I/O performance you must consider the way your system design will allocate these PCIe ports while balancing the unique characteristics of each PCIe port available from the two chipset hubs and the corresponding peripheral-device performance requirements. Read more...

Successful testing begins with effective test set up. Getting the key information that is needed when solution designers prepare to run such tests means starting with the best resources. Read more...

Attachments:

ClockFrequencies_RFTesting_Kontron-0909.pdf 70 KB

AdvancedTCA (ATCA) systems are used in many telecom, industrial, medical, security, and military applications because they allow system engineers to apply the processing horsepower of many standardized processor blades to large computing problems. When the ATCA interconnect scheme is Ethernet (as opposed to PCI Express, Infiniband, Rapid IO, or StarFabric), then Ethernet autonegotiation becomes a key factor to ensure easy, blade-by-blade upgrading of existing system designs. Read more...

Trying to eke more performance out of an existing embedded hardware design is a really tough job in many cases. So it's unusual to stumble upon a simple component substitution that can vastly improve performance and cut power consumption without requiring a hardware redesign or a software/firmware rewrite. That's exactly what you'll get if you substitute a solid-state disk (SSD) for a hard disk drive (HDD) in your embedded design. Read more...

Industries such as medical imaging, homeland security, and military defense call for rackmount systems that can run demanding software in space-constrained settings. This Embedded Innovator article shows how designers can meet this challenge by using cluster computers, which group single board computers together in a common chassis. It outlines the features and benefits of a cluster computer that incorporates quad-core Intel architecture processors, Trenton's PCI Express (PCIe) single board computers, and multi-segment, passive backplanes. Read more...

Attachments:

2009, Embedded Innovator_Trenton_Final.pdf 1797 KB

Rugged computing is a growing field, with applications in military, aerospace, and government products, industrial automation, and transportation. These applications require embedded solutions that can withstand extreme temperatures, shock and vibration, and other harsh conditions. This Embedded Innovator article shows how the new industrial-temperature Intel Atom processors meet these needs. Read more...

Attachments:

2009, Embedded Innovator_Radisys_Final.pdf 1292 KB

The xTCA standard has come a long way from its first initial release. Multi core architecture opens the door for new applications on xTCA and with higher bandwidth available for multi core processing, creates an ideal platform for applications beyond 10GbE backplane connectivity. Read more...

If you attended any of the recent Avnet sponsored Embedded Revolution Seminars and came away with a URL and 5 digit code for re-imbursement, then you've come to the right place UPDATE Nov 20th Link is live, goto http://bit.ly/seed1 Read more...

If you're familiar with Dhrystone or SPECint, you'll want to catch up on the latest integer benchmark - CoreMark, from EEMBC. Here's a look at the need for a new benchmark, the thinking behind it, what it means and doesn't mean, and some initial results for Intel Architecture processors. Read more...

Just because the solution needs to be small, doesn’t mean that the designer has to sacrifice everything with respect to graphics. This is where IEGD that’s supported with the embedded graphics controller of Intel’s eMenlow platform really helps out to take something SMALL and make it something BIG. Read more...

The PICMG COM Express subcommittee is working on the next rev of the standard, due out later this year. As a provider of COM Express products we are looking forward to the updated version which will add support for new digital display interfaces, USB 3.0, SPI interfaces and high-definition audio. Read more...

Sounds a little strong, but picking the right solution at initial design in and then again at migration time is like facing some pretty evil forces. If you pick the wrong one, they’ll get you either in the wallet or beat you out of the market. So, here’s some helpful hints. Read more...

A system design trick for your next fanless small form factor product. Read more...

Have you wondered why small form factor standards seem to be growing exponentially? COM Express, Q7, picoITX – there are a number of successful industry and consortium standards making great strides in today’s tough economic environment. The answer, in my opinion, is customization. Read more...

The new Qseven Computer-on-Module (COM) standard incorporates modern interfaces including SATA, HDMI, and SDIO. On the other hand, Qseven architects dropped support for some legacy technologies. Will any of those older features be missed? Read more...

Smaller embedded form factors are helping system designers integrate their solutions into a wide variety of high performance low power solutions in the industrial control and automation segment. Read more...

Attachments:

CS_Advantech_web_version.pdf 363 KB

COM-Express , COM-Micro and ETX 3.0, versatile form factors to meet various requirements Read more...

How well do you know the Atom platforms? Are they the same, very different... what? What's a rule of thumb to use in figuring out which one to put where? So many questions - time for some answers. Read more...

If you’re a Telecom Equipment Manufacturer faced with designing complex LTE, WiMAX, IMS or other applications you know what a challenge it is to find the right board to meet today’s critical performance, memory and flexibility requirements. Read more...

How many tools do you need in your tool box? Is a single multi-tool enough? Read more...

AMC Processor Card Benchmarks for a Montevina-based Platform and a Nehalem-EP Application Discussion Read more...

I have always like new beginnings that Spring offers, with the tulips adding color to the landscaping, the excitement of spring training, and Intel launching its new server class processors. This year seems particular good, the tulips came up early, the Cubs are playing better then 500 ball, and the Intel Xeon 5500 processors are fast and a perfect fit for ATCA. Read more...

System integrators and embedded system developers frequently need to decide what hardware to use for their projects? Making those decisions requires a careful Read more...

I was in hopes of sharing some power and benchmark data with you on an advanced AMC processor card that we are developing using the Penryn SFF processor Read more...

Multicore has been all the rage for the latest and greatest small form factor platforms in so many of the blog postings for a few months now. Read more...