Product category:
Embedded Computing and Control
News Release from: Kontron UK
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 20 January 2006
Meeting of minds aims to further E2Brain
standard
The goal of the E2Brain Interest Group is the joint development and marketing of RISC-based computers on modules designed around the new E2Brain standard.
Kontron has joined with four other companies to found the E2Brain Interest Group Joining Kontron in the group devoted to the "embedded electronic brain" are Mazet and Ultratronik, both from Germany, Odyssee from France, and UniControls of the Czech Republic
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 8 Nov 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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The goal of the E2Brain Interest Group is the joint development and marketing of RISC-based COMs designed around E2Brain - the recently published COM (computer-on-module) standard from Kontron.
The creation of this interest group reinforces E2Brain's claims as a new standard.
Users will benefit from an expanded range of available services for E2Brain and a greater range of RISC-COM products.
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By the middle of 2006, membership of the E2Brain Industrial Group should be approximately 15 companies - not only COM manufacturers, but also COM integrators and OEMs are invited to join the E2Brain Interest Group.
"The foundation of the E2Brain Interest Group became necessary sooner than we had hoped when we published the E2Brain standard", says Norbert Hauser, Vice-President Marketing with Kontron.
Additional E2Brain boards will be developed and brought to market at a rapid pace.
Therefore, in order to ensure uniform global development of the E2Brain standards, it was necessary to found an open E2Brain consortium.
"Our goal is to make E2Brain modules the state-of-the-art technology for embedded RISC designs within a few years and thus decisively change the market for customer-specific development of RISC-based solutions", comments Winfried Wolf, Product Manager for E2Brain, on the founding of the interest group.
The success of ETX in the x86 field underlines how much the odds are in favour.
Today the ETX Interest Group standard, published by Kontron in 2000, is the undisputed market leader in its segment.
How seriously the founding members take the further development of E2Brain is shown by the current reference designs, which do not come just from Kontron: Mazet recently launched the E2Brain-compliant MEB 5200 with MPC5200 from Freescale.
In addition to standard PC interfaces such as PCI, IDE, USB and 10/100Mbit/s Ethernet, industrial standards such as CAN, I2C or SPI are also available.
Ultratronik will soon be offering an E2Brain called UMC-AU1550 with AMD Au1550 and integrated security engine from SafeNet.
Odyssee, in turn, sees its own strengths in customer-specific designs.
For example, as a specialist for rugged designs, Odyssee has recently designed Kontron's EB8540/41 into an internal communication facility for a submarine.
UniControlls' strengths are in the development of industrial controls and rail traffic technology.
The names of the E2Brain Interest Group founding members should send a signal to OEMs: the members of the interest group offer full service, second source as needed, and a broadly diversified E2Brain portfolio.
Although there were just six E2Brain COMs at the time of publication of the standard, today there are already eight, and by Embedded World 2006 there should be 12 E2Brain COMs available.
Thus, the E2Brain Interest Group also fulfills "seismographic" functions for state-of-the-art processors in the field of embedded RISC technology.
The new E2Brain open computer-on-module standard offers an economical option for cost-sensitive embedded computer applications, an area where proprietary designs have so far dominated.
The use of exchangeable and scalable standard modules offers system integrators a considerably reduced time to market.
Until now, these advantages were limited to development with x86 technology, but with the E2Brain standard, they are now also available to RISC-based applications.
E2Brain modules stand out because of their high processing and communication performance with low energy requirements and extended temperature range.
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