“COM Express can be used in multiple military applications where reduced SWaP is a priority, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), avionics, and more.” – Roy Keeler, ADLINK.
COM Express growth: Emblematic of the strength of the overall computer-onmodule market. “Computer-on-module market growth is just outstanding for certain types of form factors, and COM Express crosses both industrial and military lines,” says Mike Southworth, a product marketing executive with Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions (Ashburn, Virginia). “When we started to integrate COM Express modules into our system architectures, we reduced our legacy system size by more than 25 percent, increased system technology reuse, and overcame our traditional thermal-management challenges. “COM modules works quite well for reduced SWaP applications in avionics and other applications that require the smallest SWaP possible,” Southworth adds.
its flexibility when it comes to multiple pinouts and module sizes that are all available right off the shelf. It also has multiple display and video outputs with 16 lanes of PCIe x16 or two PCIe x8 outputs, which translates to a lot of I/O coming in a small package. You can also tailor the compute power based on SWaP requirements – from a Xeon to a Core i5. “COM Express is also a busless system, so you don’t need a backplane, which makes it attractive for customers who do not need the high-speed switched fabrics that come with a VPX system,” Keeler notes. “It has the same processing power and no backplane.” COM Express update added functionality As Kasza mentions, the latest update to COM Express adds server-grade functionality to COM Express embedded computing systems. Revision 3.0 of COM Express provides for a new Type 7 connector and the addition of up to four 10 GbE interfaces on the board, according to the PCI Industrial Computing Manufac turers Group (PICMG). The organization says previous revisions of the specification were limited to a single GbE interface. The higher speed ports enabled by the update open up new markets such as data centers, where the high compute density of COM Express can result in increased rack utilization. The 10 GbE ports are also ideal for high-bandwidth video applications such as surveillance. Another change to the specification includes increasing the number of PCI Express lanes to 32 across the Type 7 connector, a move that provides a wealth of connectivity and interface options. These include the ability to facilitate the use of general-purpose graphics processing units (GPGPUs). www.smallformfactors.com
PC/104 and Small Form Factors Resource Guide Spring 2018
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