Articles
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Recently, the U.S.-based Internet service provider OneWeb ordered 900 satellites to provide additional global broadband. Knowing that this volume is more than half of the total 1,400 satellites already in orbit, and knowing that the cost for sending one into space is about $100 million, the industry needs to start thinking about new technologies that could help manage the mass of satellites that must be produced every year.
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PC/104: A fresh look in its 25th year
Let's take a moment to recall the significance of 1987 - thirty years ago. You may immediately think, "Yes. 1987. A fantastic year for the birth of tennis stars: Andy Murray, Novak Djokovic, Maria Sharapova, Ana Ivanovic, and Sara Errani were all born in '87." But I imagine your second thought is about PC/104, right? Well, it could be if you know your PC/104 history: 1987 marks the year that Ampro introduced the Little Board/PC single-board computer - one of the earliest seeds of the PC/104 ecosystem. Early collaborators such as Real Time Devices (now RTD Embedded Technologies) and Diamond Systems began developing compatible products as interest grew in the modular building block concept. By 1989, an innovative plug-in mezzanine concept was introduced; it was perhaps the first look at a stackable bus structure that could eliminate the need for a backplane. As the form and function of the 3.775-inch by 3.550-inch stackable PC architecture began to take shape, Ampro made the industry-changing decision to spin its proprietary form factor into an open standard. In 1992, twelve trailblazing companies would join together to establish the PC/104 specification and the consortium that bears its name. Stackable expansion buses, corner mounting holes, and a compact footprint proved to be a winning combination which quickly found popularity among embedded system designers. (Note: Many thanks to Rick Lehrbaum for his previous publications chronicling the early history of PC/104.)
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History of the PC/104 Consortium
The PC/104 Consortium was established in February 1992 by 12 companies with a common vision of adapting desktop computer technology for embedded applications. This consortium has had a tremendous, positive effect on the embedded computer marketplace. The initial release of the PC/104 specification in March of 1992 was an open design offering the power and flexibility of an IBM compatible personal computer in a size ideally suited for embedding. Simple and elegant in design, while small but rugged in performance, PC/104 technology bridged the successes of the past with the promises of future innovations.
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PCIe/104 - The "fishal" recognition revolution in fish counting
Fish-count surveys are vital in ensuring the conservation and management of fish stocks in our increasingly overfished seas. The accuracy of those surveys is critical in providing evidence of overfishing to drive restorative and preventative legislation. Traditional fish-counting is inherently manual, relying on fishing trawlers casting enormous nets into the ocean, pulling aboard as many fish as possible to manually count and develop the trawl survey.
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Version 2.0: The evolution of SMARC module specification
Earlier this year, the Standardization Group for Embedded Technologies (SGET) updated its Smart Mobility Architecture (SMARC) embedded computing format to the 2.0 specification. Since its inception three years ago, the SMARC small-form-factor module has given developers an innovation boost for the ultra-low-power embedded market. Due to its widespread adoption and successful application, SGET members determined that Version 2.0 was needed to support next-generation design requirements.
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Managing COTS obsolescence for military systems
The short life cycles of commercial components create many obsolescence headaches for military electronic-system designers as they try to integrate these high-performance devices into air, ground, sea platforms that must last for decades, that have long system development cycles, and time-consuming testing procedures. As the military looks to leverage more open architectures and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technology, the challenge of managing the obsolescence that comes with COTS will only become more difficult.
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UAS payloads, radar best bets for military electronics market
"Uncertainty" best describes the current outlook for the U.S. military market, with the next president's positions still somewhat unclear, as is the nation's future defense outlook.Regardless of inertia or doubt in Washington, military program managers and industry engineers must continue to keep the current defense electronics systems in air, ground, and sea platforms running efficiently to ensure continuing military readiness. Moreover, key radar, unmanned, electronic warfare, and other systems must still be modernized. All of this means that opportunities still exist for embedded electronics suppliers.
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ARMed and ready
While the rest of the engineering world has been developing embedded systems using the ARM microcontroller unit (MCU) architecture for many years, the high-reliability (hi-rel) market has been slow to adopt it. That is a pity because the biggest benefit of using an ARM-based microcontroller is the ease of development that ARM offers, by virtue of the large supporting ecosystem of tools.
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A go-to embedded solution
There was a time when I watched the cooking competition television show "Chopped" somewhat regularly. It's an intense ingredients-based culinary challenge that pushes chefs to their limits under strict time constraints. Amidst the nearly endless food combinations available to the contestants, it seems as though every episode I watched included one person (and sometimes two or three) who used mascarpone cheese. Often in the dessert round, the chef's storytelling voiceover (dripping with tension) would recount, "I ran to the pantry. I grabbed the mascarpone ... "
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PC/104 architecture maintains relevance in a competitive field
PC/104 is into its third decade, standing the test of time, while myriad form factors of yesteryear have faded into irrelevance. So why is PC/104 so persistent? How has it survived? The simple answer for me is the tireless work of the consortium that lies behind its continued success. A collaboration of companies with a common vision, it was formed in 1992 with 12 members but now has almost triple that. The PC/104 Consortium ensures PC/104's continued relevance. The spine of a PC/104 stack is the desktop-derived peripheral bus, arguably the key evolution since 1992 (Figure 1).
Stephen St. Amant, PC/104 Consortium President
Rory Dear, European Editor/Technical Contributor
John McHale, Editorial Director
Rory Dear, European Editor/Technical Contributor