John McHale, Editorial Director, OpenSystems Media

• 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.

  John McHale Editorial Director

• Unmanned aircraft leverage PC/104, COM Express, and other small form factors

  

  Unmanned aircraft systems (UASs) continue to shrink in size, as do their payloads, requiring system designers to leverage small-form-factor, embedded-computing standards like PC/104, COM Express, and others.

  John McHale Editorial Director

• DoD budget request funds platforms that leverage small form factors

  John McHale Editorial Director

  Regardless of which military trade show I attend or what military application is being discussed at a show, the common trend is that everything is getting smaller, whether it's GPS systems, avionics computers, unmanned aircraft system (UAV) payloads, etc. This trend bodes well for suppliers to the military of small-form-factor standards such as PC/104, COM Express, or SMARC.

• Unmanned aircraft leverage PC/104, COM Express, and other small form factors

  

  While PC/104 has been around for decades it has never been healthier. Its main advantages - ruggedness, compact size, and modularity - have never been more in demand in the military electronics market, especially in unmanned systems.

  John McHale Editorial Director

• PC/104 and small form factors popular in defense electronics systems

  

  Now as SWaP requirements become more prevalent in military electronics system designs, PC/104’s place in this market is more secure than ever.

  John McHale Editorial Director

• PC/104 well positioned in military market

  John McHale Editorial Director

  Editorial Director John McHale discusses military embedded computing products becoming smaller, and the effect that has on SFF designers.

• Intel processors - Haswell and Bay Trail - offer multiple benefits for SFF designs

  

  Engineers across markets such as military, aerospace, medical, automotive, etc., are leveraging the performance and power management benefits of Intel’s 4th generation Core processors (Haswell) and Atom E3800 processor product family SoCs (Bay Trail) for their small form factor (SFF) embedded computing designs. The Core’s i7 high-performance attributes are enabling unprecedented performance capability for intensive signal processing functions in radar and medical imaging, while the E3800 family is popular in wearable applications due to its ability to marry performance with significant power savings.

  John McHale Editorial Director

• Defense electronics and 3D printing

  John McHale Editorial Director

  The Department of Defense (DoD) is notorious for kicking tires on new technology for years before deploying it in mission-critical applications – and only after rigorous testing. However, with 3D printing they seem to be doing more than kicking the tires.

• Military UAS market ideal for PC/104 and SFF designs

  John McHale Editorial Director

  SWaP constraints and DoD budget constraints make the military UAS market an ideal fit for off-the-shelf small form factors.

• Linux the popular BSP choice for PC/104 and SFF users

  

  As Windows XP nears End Of Life (EOL), many SFF users are turning to Linux as the Board Support Package (BSP) of choice.

  John McHale Editorial Director