congatec announces full support of SMARC 2.0

Following the recent release of the new SMARC 2.0 specification, congatec has announced its full support of the specification. SMARC 2.0 was released by the Standardization Group for Embedded Technologies e.V. (SGET).

congatec’s support of the standard is no surprise for insiders, as congatec played a major role within the SGET in developing the SMARC 2.0 specification. The new specification heralds a milestone in embedded Computer-on-Module technology and is especially designed for particularly multimedia-oriented and IoT-connected small systems.

“Revision 2.0 has elevated SMARC onto an excellent quality level and we can unconditionally recommend it to our customers. Known issues with previous versions — like the all-too-random Alternate Function Block — have been removed and this eases customers’ entry into SMARC technology and secures long-term availability,” said Christian Eder, marketing director at congatec. Eder is also a member of the SGET board and editor of the SMARC 2.0 specification.

“SMARC 2.0 has got all the right qualifications to become an extremely successful new module standard, and win significant market share.”

congatec’s Christian Eder played a major role in drafting the SMARC 2.0 specification.

SMARC 2.0 offers numerous leading-edge serial IOs as well as IoT, network and video interfaces and is thus destined for a wide range of multimedia and graphics-oriented IoT applications. SMARC is positioned between the rugged, ultralow-power standard Qseven for deeply embedded systems and the feature-rich COM Express standard for especially high-performance embedded designs, which even include edge and fog servers.

With the big step from SMARC 1.1 to 2.0, SMARC’s position in the established COM market has become clearly defined. Underlining SMARC 2.0’s focus on multimedia, via the 314 pins of the MXM 3.0 connector, numerous multimedia interfaces are available, allowing up to four video outputs. 2x 24-bit LVDS/eDP/MIPI DSI plus HDMI/DP++ and DP++ are executed. Additionally, there are 2x MIPI camera interfaces and two audio interfaces via HDA and I2S.

SMARC 2.0 now features additional USB ports for up to 6x USB including 2x USB 3.0, a second Ethernet port for vertical IoT connection, a fourth PCI Express Lane and 1x eSPI. Obsolete interfaces such as the parallel ports for camera and display, the Alternative Function Block, off module eMMC, SPDIF and one of three I2S channels have been dropped.

The first congatec SMARC 2.0 modules as well as carrier boards and starter kits including extensive software, driver and BIOS support will be available in August 2016.