Study trends bus architectures for industrial computers

A recent market study by Venture Development Corp. (VDC) shows that usage of primary bus architectures in passive backplane ruggedized/industrial computer systems varies substantially by application areas.

By Control Engineering Staff March 11, 2004

A recent market study by Venture Development Corp . (VDC) shows that usage of primary bus architectures in passive backplane ruggedized/industrial computer systems varies substantially by application areas. Future usage is also expected to vary among the five North American and Western European application sectors examined.

Five market sectors for passive backplane industrial computer systems indicate varying usage of PCI, VME, Compact PCI, and other bus architectures.

In Industrial Automation Control & Instrumentation , VDC’s study sees market share of PCI bus rising while that of PCI/ISA (PICMG) Hybrid bus is declining. Shares of 2003 shipments for bus boards for this and other market segments are shown in the chart.

The Energy, Utilities & Transportation Infrastructure sector expects share gains for basic CompactPCI as well as its more advanced forms (PICMG 2.16 thru 2.20). The study further forecasts start of shipment shares and growth for ATCA (PICMG) 3.x Advanced TCA serial interconnect architecture types and for ePCI (PCI Express). These trends are mainly for applications requiring higher bandwidths, according to VDC.For Medical, Laboratory & Scientific arenas, PCI and VME are currently the most used buses. Computer systems using the VME bus are forecast to decline over the period to 2006, displaced by advanced CompactPCI and Advanced TCA serial interconnect architecture. VME is expected to migrate to medical imaging and other more-demanding applications.In Communication applications, CompactPCI and VME had the largest shipment shares for 2003. However, their shares are expected to decline substantially over the forecast period, as demand grows for more advanced CompactPCI and Advanced TCA architectures.

For Defense & Aerospace , VME bus architecture dominates current shipments. This trend is forecast to continue through 2006, although at lower shares. Venture Development sees little incentive for large defense/aerospace VME customers to move away from their investment “as long as technical and performance advantages of competing architectures can be duplicated or imitated within VME bus.”

—Frank J. Bartos, executive editor, Control Engineering, fbartos@reedbusiness.com