Plug and play: PICMG COM Express group; LXI plugfest; new 6U cPCI line

In separate developments, PICMG COM Express gets a plug and play subcommittee, and the LXI Consortium plans another plugfest event. Also, at Embedded Systems Conference last week, Kontron introduced a new CompactPCI 6U line.

By Control Engineering Staff September 25, 2007

Irvine, CA and Niwot, CO —In separate developments,

PICMG

COM Express gets a plug and play subcommittee, and the LXI Consortium plans another plugfest event . Also, at Embedded Systems Conference last week, Kontron introduced a new CompactPCI 6U line.

Adlink Technology congatec AG , a manufacturer of COM Express, XTX and ETX embedded computer boards, and MSC have formed a PICMG COM Express plug and play subcommittee. PICMG is a consortium of more than 450 companies that collaboratively develop open specifications for high performance telecommunications and industrial computing applications.

The COM Express Plug and Play Design Guide will increase the use of COM Express modules by defining a set of carrier design guidelines that enable plug-and-play support and increase compatibility between COM Express modules from various vendors.

Jeff Munch, CTO of

After the release of the PICMG COM Express specification (COM.0), several manufacturers filled the marketplace with a variety of COM Express modules. It became apparent that a plug-and-play specification was required to mitigate carrier board incompatibilities. Therefore, Adlink, congatec, and MSC applied to the PICMG group for the creation of a subcommittee to define a COM Express Plug and Play Design Guide to increase adoption of the COM.0 standard through a plug-and-play carrier board design specification.

The basis of the subcommittee began last April when Aaeon, Adlink, Ampro, and congatec AG started the COM Express PnP Initiative to focus on carrier board design. The initiative has evolved to address incompatibilities among vendors using proprietary carrier board designs by providing a definite specification to increase and streamline the adoption and use of COM Express products. The companies describe COM Express modules as highly integrated off-the-shelf building blocks based on a PCI Express bus architecture that plugs into custom-made, application-specific carrier boards.

In other interoperability news,

LXI Consortium

announced plans for the Tenth PlugFest and General Meeting, open to members and non-members, in Munich, Germany, Oct. 9-11, 2007. The site will be member company Rohde & Schwarz’s training facilities.

Highlights include:

Consortium members Goepel and Data Translation will test their first LXI instrument for certification and Rodhe & Schwarz will conduct Class B testing. Multi-vendor Demonstration System (MVDS) will showcase capabilities of LXI-compliant instruments from multiple vendors.

Also see:

CompactPCI: Kontron unveils new range of rugged 6U boards

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