Economies of scale helping low-volume design and manufacturing

SFF: Most of RadiSys' small form factor-based products are COM Express-based. What does the design-in trend for COM Express look like?

CLOWES: We're seeing adoption across a number of vertical markets, such as medicine, gaming, industrial control and automation, transportation, military, aerospace, and government. Our customers are seeing the value of the Computer-On-Module [COM] approach, specifically the COM Express architecture, and they're migrating from what was historically a fully custom, proprietary in-house design or from other COM architectures. So we're seeing strong growth in the adoption of COM Express; in fact, adoption and market acceptance have been faster than we expected.

SFF: What application areas are the hottest right now?

CLOWES: COM Express is experiencing tremendous growth in mobile graphics applications. The nature of the COM Express architecture is that it provides excellent support for tough performance, power, and size requirements, which makes it well suited to those types of applications. (Editor's note: Figure 1 shows RadiSys' latest COM Express module, the Procelerant CE3100.)

Figure 1:

One type of application area where COM Express has been very successful is in cart-based, portable ultrasound machines for medical applications. These machines have very long life spans – about 10 years – and a COM Express approach allows easier and cost-effective upgrades to the module over the product's lifetime. And again, the size, power, and performance characteristics of COM Express are very well suited to these devices.

Another type of design activity is with industrial control and automation systems. COM Express lets our customers consolidate multiple, disparate legacy platforms into a smaller design, which makes their products more efficient in terms of power and cost. The two-board approach enables them to use off-the-shelf COM Express modules for the compute portion, and then build the application-specific portion on a custom carrier, which reduces their design burden considerably.

SFF: What do new, lower-power Intel Architecture processors mean for COM Express?

CLOWES: From the COM Express perspective, there are really two main breakthroughs associated with low-power Intel Architecture processors: ultra-low power and the very low price point. Together, these characteristics let us extend our reach into many new application spaces, particularly battery-powered, handheld, passive-cooling kinds of designs. Because of this new flexibility, we can also offer new markets the advantages of the enormous software ecosystem associated with Intel Architecture processors.

SFF: What's happening in software for COM Express modules?

CLOWES: One interesting opportunity with these platforms is in using software from our partner VirtualLogix and our own RTOS [Real-Time Operating System] – OS-9. VirtualLogix software lets the customer run different OSs [Operating Systems] on specific dedicated cores and isolate them from each other. This means that a multicore processor can run an application on OS-9 or another RTOS on one core and a Windows or Linux application on another. Since each OS has its own dedicated compute engine, significant performance increases are possible, compared to running the RTOS on top of the general-purpose OS. This is a very innovative way for our customers to take advantage of Intel's hardware-assisted virtualization, and it helps them optimize the hardware's value. With the ongoing quantum leaps forward in Intel Architecture processor performance, it also opens the door to hardware platform consolidation.

SFF: Where do you see the small form factor market in five years? The original vision was that COM Express would unite module designs. How has this played out so far, and will the wide range of form factors eventually merge?

CLOWES: As I mentioned before, theCOM Express module is still fairly new, so market awareness is still building and acceptance is increasing in various vertical markets. So we're very optimistic about the growth of the COM Express market.

Many customers that previously used custom designs for everything are now seeing the value of a two-board approach, where they can utilize commercial off-the-shelf compute modules. That trend has the tendency to help consolidate a broad range of form factors under COM Express. A significant value of COM Express is that it's based on a truly open standard, as opposed to some earlier efforts that projected the illusion of an open standard, but the technology was really controlled by one company or another.

While COM Express is doing well, we're also seeing acceleration in the adoption of the Mini-ITX form factor, especially the low-power version. That includes applications like test and measurement, medical, gaming, and general control applications. For customers who want everything on a single board and don't need the added benefits of COM Express, the Mini-ITX form factor is ideal.

SFF: How is RadiSys addressing needs for mass customization using small form factor modules?

CLOWES: The idea is that you can have a basic design, and with relatively little effort, you can customize it for a specific application's needs. For motherboards, that might mean adding components or changing the configuration, typically in terms of I/O. For COM Express, the modules themselves can be altered for characteristics like extended temperature ranges, but more typically, it takes the form of a custom carrier card.

The COM Express module contains complex computational components, so customers don't have to design it, and the carrier board lets them build customized, application-specific aspects of the solution logic. COM Express provides the cost and technology benefits of high-volume design and manufacturing to smaller-volume products since the R&D is spread among a large number of customers. ➤

Wade Clowes is VP of Commercial Segment at RadiSys, based in Hillsboro, Oregon. He joined RadiSys in 2005, bringing nearly 30 years of industry expertise, including previous experience with RadiSys as VP and general manager of the company's Application Equipment Division. Prior to RadiSys, Wade was the principal of Clowes and Associates, a consulting firm specializing in business and organization development. His other experience includes a 22-year career with HP where he held a variety of general and operations management positions. Wade received BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Montana State University and completed the Stanford Executive Program in 1992.