Herbert Erd, NAT

For the past 15-plus years, optical inspection – also called machine vision – has expanded worldwide, leaving its footprint in different vertical markets. These days machine vision is mainly performed in three ways: offline, where parts are removed from the manufacturing process; near-line, during which parts are inspected close to the manufacturing process, leading to [...]

Christian Eder congatec AG and Jessica Isquith President of PICMG

COM-HPC is the new, soon-to-be released PICMG standard for high-performance Computer-on-Modules (COMs). The pinout and therefore also the functionality were recently officially approved. Final PICMG ratification of the COM-HPC specification is scheduled for the first half of 2020; in the meantime, the PICMG subcommittee already approved two key aspects in November 2019: the physical footprints [...]

Tania Scroggie, GDCA and Siku Thompson, GDCA

Starting in the late 1980s, the embedded industry started to see a change in electronic product life cycles. Before that time, computing technology was primarily commercial and capital equipment had long introduction phases. Today, however, consumer demand for electronic products drives component manufacturers toward a quick-to-market life cycle. Balancing new product introduction and legacy product [...]

Doug Sandy Vice President of Technology for PICMG

“Simple is hard,” goes that old axiom. Reducing the essence of a complex idea or system into something that is readily understood and easy to use takes time, effort, and creativity. Never has this been more true than in today’s push toward the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and by extension its use of sensors. [...]

Markus Wiersch, Duagon

Products that are based on standards make our lives easier. They standardize how we implement solutions in diverse applications, providing us with assurance that the solutions are sustainable and will therefore prevail for many years to come. Developed as open standards, their use and re-use is not restricted in any way. The advantages for users [...]

Heiko Koerte N.A.T. and Vollrath Dirksen N.A.T. GmbH

DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) - one of the world's leading particle-accelerator centers, conducting top-level international research into the fundamental relationships of matter - was tasked with finding a successor technology for its control and data-acquisition systems, which were based on VME and proprietary hardware, some of which was more than 30 years old. The main requirements: better signal quality, higher bandwidth, and support for several decades of operation, allowing for a phased migration in current installations.

Gary Rutledge Amphenol Backplane & System Integration

Next-generation data rates are placing higher demands on backplane design, assembly, and test. New production techniques are required to deal with these evolving data-rate realities.

Doug Sandy Vice President of Technology for PICMG

The Internet of Things (IoT) promises to transform the way that we deploy industrial applications by combining the best practices from the IT space with cloud-based analytics and machine learning.

Justin Moll Vice President of Marketing at PICMG

MicroTCA is a highly versatile backplane-based architecture that is utilized in a wide variety of applications. With a high-speed connector, compact size, hot-swappability, and 99.9999 percent achievable uptime, it's a powerful architecture. Particularly in military/aerospace and physics applications, end users are asking for solutions to make the architecture faster, handle more power, provide more I/O, and meet other demands of the environment. The MicroTCA/AMC vendors are stepping up to meet these requirements.

Jessica Isquith President of PICMG

The Computer on Module (COM) market is expected to grow significantly over the next five-plus years, according to multiple market research studies. Within the COM market, COM Express is the recognized leader, with its strongest areas of growth being IIoT [industrial Internet of Things] and adoption in rugged environments, including drones, military, and transportation.

Christian Eder congatec AG

With the newly revised (Version 3.0) iteration of the most successful computer-on-module (COM) standard, a new pinout type is added to extend the reach of COM Express to server type applications.

Doug Sandy, PICMG

More than a decade has passed since the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) was introduced, but the vision has yet to fully materialize. While some important progress has been made with small wearable devices, thermostats, and smart phones, the average consumer hasn’t yet experienced significant advantage from interconnected devices working together for their benefit. Cloud computing, [...]