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The flagship of small form factor modules Computer-on-Modules

Author: Claus Giebert E-mail: [email protected]

www.advantech.com

Design considerations in the small form factor segment of Computer-on-Modules are critical these days as three form factor standards compete for the favor of engineers. At the end of the day, most will pick Qseven as recent studies predict. What is the secret behind these design considerations?

Engineers tasked with building small, space-constrained smart devices with low or ultra-low power x86 or ARM processor technologies are facing the challenge that standard motherboards and single board computers usually don’t have the right setup for their applications. In most cases, the footprints of standard boards are too large while the interfaces provided are often not those needed and/or there are too many and/or they are not located where they are demanded. Full custom designs can address all these needs with perfectly tailored boards. But custom designs are very time consuming and expensive to develop; they are also maintenance intensive from a software point of view and require conscious efforts in obsolescence management for each component over their entire lifecycle. Therefore, they are only recommended for high-volume devices. Universally available Computer-on-Modules, however, make customization both faster and more cost efficient; they are suitable even for smallest volume series productions with only a few hundred boards per year; and the entire servitization for this computing component is carried out by the vendor.

Computer-on-Modules: A highly reliable choice Computer-on-Modules are application-ready embedded computers with all relevant drivers, libraries and APIs pre-integrated. In combination with carrier boards, they can be designed to fit exactly the required shape and interfaces are located where the applications need them – and this most often without the use of cables. Designing these carrier boards is less complex compared to full custom designs; and design guides, evaluation boards and schematics as well as board design tutorials help engineers to develop carrier boards in a highly efficient and state-of-the-art manner. On top of all this, the standardization of Computer-on-Modules adds very high design security and enables even second source purchasing strategies. Commercially of-the-shelf available accessories such as cooling solutions or display cables further contribute to increased design efficiency. All these arguments have led to the widespread adoption of Computer-on-Modules in embedded computing solutions. No other embedded computing platforms such as motherboards, SBC, slot boards or platforms for passive backplanes have a broader acceptance as recent studies from IHS found out. So picking a Computer-on-Module for designing a custom solution is by far the most accepted and reliable choice.

Picking the right small form factor However, within the sector of small form factor Computer-on-Modules it is not that easy to identify the right specification from a technical point of view as there are three competing form factor standards today: Qseven, SMARC 2.0 and COM Express Mini. But why do recent studies estimate that Qseven is the standard with by far the largest market share and strongest growth prospects so that this form factor will still be the leading form factor with the highest market penetration in 2020? There are several arguments that are highly convincing.

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Qseven has the broadest vendor support A current market analysis of main market drivers shows that Qseven has the broadest market support:

45 40 Small form factor 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 SMARC COM Express Mini Qseven

Caption: Qseven has the broadest product portfolio publicly available the websites of the standardization bodies SGET and PICMG.  These results are a significant and undeniable indicator for the fact that there is a massive competitive gap between the Qseven offerings and its followers, COM Express and SMARC 2.0. And this competitive edge is definitely a plus factor for Qseven.

Qseven is platform agnostic Another plus factor lies in the fact that Qseven modules support not only x86 but also ARM platforms such as the iMX.6 processors from NXP. This makes this form factor by far more attractive for engineers as both leading low and ultra-low power processor technologies are supported. Not only can the Wintel approach be extensively addressed but also Android ARM platform developments – and all this with a single form factor. COM Express Mini does not support this segment to date, making this form factor only suitable for engineers who work in the PICMG COM Express ecosystem and with larger form factors. If engineers want to be open for ARM, they can only consider SMARC 2.0 or Qseven. And it is strongly recommended to be open in the small form factor sector as ARM is dominating this segment in the commercial and consumer electronics sector. So what differentiates the new SMARC 2.0 form factor from the established and well developed Qseven form factor? Is SMARC better than Qseven because it is brand new?

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2017

ARM x86

2021

ARM x86

Caption: Qseven is available for both x86 and ARM architectures. Analysts predict that the market share of ARM modules will increase.

SMARC 2.0 is just an extended Qseven specification Qseven offers all the major interfaces demanded and there is not that much that differentiates the SMARC 2.0 specification, launched in 2016, from Qseven, launched in 2008. But surely, SMARC 2.0 must be better because it is brand new? Undisputedly the SMARC standard offers more signal pins and uses the latest connector version. But does this really matter? What are the new interfaces that are better supported by SMARC 2.0? A closer investigation reveals that there are not that many unique features compared to Qseven, if any. Designers are advised to beware and not to trust all the marketing hype around SMARC 2.0 as the real differentiating factors between SMARC and Qseven are little. In the end, they boil down to support of up to 4 independent displays instead of 3, and camera support via an edge connector instead of the flat foil cable used on Qseven. This makes SMARC 2.0 a little bit but not massively more attractive for multimedia oriented applications. As a consequence, the huge existing base of already deployed installations will stay within Qseven and benefit from the huge and stable footprint in the market. So nothing speaks against the ‘good old’ Qseven form factor except if applications definitely need 4 display ports or want to save costs for the MIPI camera cable. Even the old connector obsolescence arguments are outdated because the Qseven connector has now more vendors than the SMARC connector offers today. All these facts explain why Qseven will stay the most dominant computer-on-module standard for small form factor applications for many years to come even if all the other form factors will show good growth as well. The following quick top-down evaluation provides engineers with the most important selection criteria for picking the right small form factor computer-on-module. These can be summarized as follows:

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 If you are not a pioneer in smart vision and don’t need a 4th display – which by the way is not supported by current SoCs – then Qseven offers you by far more freedom of choices than SMARC 2.0.  If you are not conjunct with the larger form factors of PICMG’s COM Express specifications and don’t have the need to re-use this ecosystem then Qseven is far more suitable for you than COM Express Mini Type 10 modules.

What can engineers expect from Qseven modules? Let’s start with the basic feature set: Qseven comes in two sizes: 70 x 70 mm and 40 x 70 mm (aka Size µQseven). Qseven provides an MXM2 compliant finger connector at the Connector edge of the board. This connector is flat, rugged and cost effective. The pinout to the carrier board features 230 pins. SMARC has Pinout more pins (314); COMe Type 10 less (220). Gigabit , USB 2.0 and 3.0, sound (HDA & I2S), video Standard device (DisplayPort, TMDS, LVDS), camera over additional flat foil interfaces connector (MIPI CSI) Internal extensions PCI Express, LPC (suitable for TPM), SDIO Storage SATA and/or PCIe Management Additional control and power management signals Max TDP target Up to 12W

Major customization levers are the PCB form factor, the location of the interfaces – here even the decision not to route all of Qseven’s supported interfaces to the carrier board is an important customization factor – as well as the internal extension busses PCI Express, LPC, and SDIO. PCIe support is compliant to the latest 3.0 specifications offering up to 32 Gbit/s over 4 lanes for any high speed peripheral interface demands such as further Ethernet ports or additional ultra-fast USB 3.0 ports. The SDIO interface is perfectly suited for SD cards as well as for I/O devices such as GPS receivers or wireless interfaces and modems. Finally, the LPC bus is another feature that will underpin Qseven’s long term success as SMARC 2.0 no longer supports LPC. Why is LPC so important? Many embedded computing platforms rely heavily on this bus as it is simple to use, far less complex than PCI/PCIe and the primary substitute for most legacy ISA bus applications. Supporting what is deployed in the embedded fields is an important lever to success. This can be easily validated by having a look at the ETX/XTX market share with its legacy ISA and PCI bus. It is still very substantial, even though its well established successor COM Express has been available for more than 12 years – the PICMG launched COM Express in 2005 and the foundation for this form factor standard was laid by Intel in November 2003. This illustrates that even if the market is highly dynamic and innovative, decisions to change a winning team are quite rare. And this conservative attitude is backed up by the long term support provided by the module vendors. To summarize: Both from a market and growth point of view, as well as from a technical and field deployed technologies point of view, it is a verified fact that Qseven will stay the most major flagship standard for small form factor Computer-on-Modules for many years to come. Consequently, any small form factor system designer should definitely evaluate Qseven.

What different modules are available for Qseven? As already stated, the SGET website hosts a broad range of modules, carrier boards and accessories for Qseven where engineers can find their most suitable solutions from various

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vendors. Advantech is one of those vendors. It recommends itself as a reliable partner as the company is the worldwide leader in embedded computer technologies and has been supporting the Qseven form factor since its introduction in 2008. As a result, the company has many years of experience with Qseven and offers one of the widest ranges of Qseven small form factor modules worldwide. Customers benefit from more choices from one manufacturer and are bound to find a solution that fits as one can see from the recent offerings.

SOM-3567: Intel® Available in wide operating temperature versions. Medium cost solution. Windows 7 and Linux Atom™/Celeron® Processor support. SOM-3568: Intel® Low cost solution with good performance. Pentium™/Celeron® N3000 Series Windows 10 and Linux support. SOM-3569: Intel® Available in wide operating temperature versions. Higher performance option with good graphics. Pentium™/Celeron® N4200 Series Support for Windows 10 and Linux. ROM-7421: NXP i.MX6 Dual/Quad Outstanding multimedia performance and excellent power saving technology. Best choice Plus 1GHz Cortex-A9 for ARM based computing platforms. High performance SoC and I/O solution chips ROM-7510: NI Sitara AM5728 with Linux support. Allows developers to keep Cortex -A15 1.5GHz control functions separate from other algorithms programmed on the DSPs and coprocessors. Development kit supporting Advantech Qseven SOM-DB3520: Development Board modules enabling project work to start immediately.

Why do ARM designers need Computer-on-Modules? Standardized form factors are most common in the x86 sector but not yet so prevalent in the ARM sector. This has historical reasons. As x86 processors were widely used across the same applications for personal computing, the feature set is heavily standardized and only performance upgrades make the difference. This has led to a stable standardization of x86 boards and modules in the embedded sector as well. In the ARM sector, it’s a totally different story. ARM processors were in the majority used as system on chips for highly dedicated applications. That is why there was not that much standardization in the past. But feature sets have become stable now in the ARM sector. At least for those processors in the low-power tablet and smartphone performance class which both have quite stable interface requirements over several processor generations. As a consequence, processors in this performance category now open up the same opportunities for standardized products as the embedded x86 sector. So the market will change step by step while ARM engineers profit from the benefits of standardization and standardized form factors become more popular. 2018 might become the year that Qseven will gain massive momentum in the ARM sector as the new NXP i.MX8 processor is expected to become available. While the first generations of standardized ARM Qseven modules have now been in place for several years, just imagine you had built a design on the basis of the NXP i.MX6 processor. Once the NXP i.MX8 processor will become available you could then immediately switch your design to the latest state-of-the-art processor technology. Would this not massively contribute to your competitiveness by being first to market? One can expect that computer-on-module vendors will be among the first vendors to offer OEMs application-ready components, including comprehensive OS and driver support. So why not jump on the train of vendor-independent standardized Computer-on-Modules now? Again, standardization offers massive cost and time-to-market benefits plus support of second sourcing strategies for higher design security, better pricing and highest delivery service levels. Speaking of services leads straight to the next benefit of Computer-on-Modules:

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Enter Advantech’s COM Design-in Services 2.0 Purchasers of Computer-on-Modules don’t need to go to a design house but can choose to get their own carrier board design and system integration from the module vendor. This single source service is offered at a high service level with competitive pricing and seamless access to the vendor’s deep know-how about the computing cores. Advantech’s COM Design-in Services, for example, cover all customer questions from the design-in process and volume production, to product lifecycle management. Their OEM support is more or less identical to an in-house engineer and also includes personal trainers and consultants. Customers benefit from easy selection of modules, accessories and software, all backed up by an integrated team of experts. Such services transform complex Computer-on-Module development into easy tasks so that OEMs can better meet new market challenges. In this sector, Advantech offers important improvements: While their COM Design-in Service 1.0 focused on timely response to customers’ issues, the new Service 2.0 now offers proactive services with pre-validated technology to ensure project success and time-to-market. And this service does not stop after delivery, as Advantech also offers add-on services for inventory in place. This starts with SUSIAccess for enhanced system security in IoT and Industry 4.0 environments as well as monitoring and maintenance services for deployed equipment, and extends to the WISE-PaaS Marketplace. WISE-Paas Marketplace is an online software store that features Advantech’s exclusive software services, diverse IoT cloud services, IoT security services, WISE-PaaS IoT software services, and solution packages pre-bundled into Advantech’s Edge Intelligence Servers (EIS). The WISE-PaaS Marketplace also integrates IoT partners’ cloud and software solutions to accelerate the development of tools for upgrading existing systems to the cloud. Customers can subscribe to WISE-PaaS Marketplace services using WISE-Points provided with WISE-PaaS VIP membership packages to obtain cloud-based software solutions that facilitate innovation for the IoT. In the end, OEMs have nearly all the choices with one manufacturer and always a solution that fits.

Caption: The WISE-PaaS Alliance program serves as a collaborative ecosystem for providing software and services, design support, business partnering, and community insights to create diverse offerings, business models, and service provision methods beyond traditional buying/selling interactions.

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Conclusion Qseven is the flagship standard for small form factor Computer-on-Modules and Advantech is a flagship vendor of such modules. The company commands a most complete product portfolio which can immediately answer to customers’ specific needs with near off-the-shelf convenience, while providing on-demand engineering support for quick custom design modifications and BIOS settings, working side-by-side with its customers throughout their product development, and helping them complete their project within the shortest period of time. For more information please contact: [email protected]

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