Featured Oct 26 - Nov 5
Get Ready for PCB Carolina
Published on
November 5, 2021 at 12:50:03 PM PDT November 5, 2021 at 12:50:03 PM PDTth, November 5, 2021 at 12:50:03 PM PDT
Exhibiting at PCB Carolina
PCB Carolina is an electronics design trade show in Raleigh, NC that we’ve exhibited at for years. It was cancelled due to COVID last year, and we really missed it! We are so excited that we’ll be exhibiting there next week ~ especially excited because Raleigh is only a half hour away from WDL HQ!
PCB Carolina includes a hot breakfast with a Keynote Address, access to 16 technical sessions by industry leaders, 70 exhibitors, a full lunch buffet including BBQ brisket and fried chicken, and it’s ALL FREE! Register now to attend on Wednesday, November 10!
In preparation for the show, we set up a PCB Carolina specific landing page to highlight products we know PCB designers and equipment developers will find interesting. We are spotlighting products that decrease development costs and speed time to market.
Computers-On-Module
Computers-On-Module are classic examples of products that relieve development headaches! Computers-on-Module come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and feature a variety of processors. The awesome thing about a Computer-on-Module is that other engineers dealt with all the complexities of getting a processor, memory, and power management up and running. Inputs and outputs like HDMI, LAN, CAN, USB, and audio are present on one or two high density connectors, which mate with a carrier board. A carrier board is simpler to design and costs less to build than a fully custom computer.
There are proprietary Computers-on-Module which are typically quite tiny and feature extremely low power processors. There are Computers-on-Module that conform to industry-standard form factors, such as COM Express, SMARC, Q7, and ETX. The benefit of using an industry standard specification is that you can replace your computer-on-module at any time with a different module from any manufacturer as long as it is in the same form factor. Check out our previous blog post about the benefits of COM Express.
COM Express is an open source specification maintained by the PICMG Consortium that defines 4 form factors and 8 pin outs. Today the most commonly used COM Express pin outs are Type 6, Type 7, and Type 10. The smallest of these is Type 10: at 55mm x 84mm it is only the size of a credit card! Let’s take a look at some of our best selling Type 10 modules!
The Kontron COMe-m4AL10 Intel Atom x7-E3950 on a credit card sized COM Express Type 10 module. State-of-the-art image processing & graphics capabilities with extensive real-time computing power. Remarkable performance-per-watt ratio. Long-term availability. LPDDR4 memory for highest data transfer rate demands.
The credit card sized @ADLINK_Tech nanoX-AL COM Express Type 10 Mini with Intel Atom E3940. For applications that demand optimized processing & graphics performance with low power consumption in a long product life solution.
The @TQ Group TQMxE39M credit card sized COM Express Type 10 Mini module featuring the Intel Apollo Lake Atom processor. Achieve a new level of compute performance, security, and media processing performance for industrial automation, real time computing and more! Here we get to something really cool. You don’t even have to design the carrier board for your computer-on-module! Connect Tech has been manufacturing solutions for the embedded market for over 30 years, including ready-to-deploy COM Express, SMARC, Q7, and ETX carrier boards! Their COM Express family includes carriers for Type 10, Type 6, and Type 7 modules.
The Connect Tech COM Express® Type 10 Mini Carrier Board is ultra small and fully ruggedized with locking connectors for the ultimate in durability. It supports all COM Express Type 10 modules, and provides Mini PCIe, mSATA, SATA, GBE, USB, LVDS, DisplayPort, Audio, and serial connectors. 
Connect Tech also manufactures carrier boards and systems based on NVIDIA® Jetson modules. NVIDIA has made AI and robotics development broadly accessible by providing the AI performance and power efficiency to run autonomous machines faster and with less power in an affordably priced Jetson module. Connect Tech solutions make the Jetson modules deployment ready!Industry standard computers-on-module enable customers to focus on their core competencies, accelerate time-to-market, and lower costs. Besides the COM Express Type 10 modules above, ADLINK offers Computers-on-Module in COM Express Type 6 and Type 7, SMARC, Q7, and ETX form factors.
The Computer-on-Module approach means equipment developers don’t worry with complex computer system design ~ only the easier to design carrier board is application specific. Manufacturers can choose from a wide variety of ADLINK COMs to satisfy requirements for performance, cost, power consumption, size, and I/O.We will be back next week with more focus on products for PCB Carolina. Check out that landing page for more information on flash and memory solutions from Innodisk and Swissbit, industry standard computers-on-module from Kontron, TQ, and ICOP, proprietary computers-on-module from ICOP and TQ-Systems, embedded modems from MultiTech, and the very cool ROS 2 ready ROScube from ADLINK! And go ahead and get registered for PCB Carolina! The show is completely free including breakfast and lunch!