Happy 25th Anniversary!
Since our founding in 1994, nine families of specifications and tens of thousands of successful collaborations have led to billions of dollars in products and solutions across a wide array of markets. We have great momentum to continue our efforts in solving embedded computing requirements through new and expanded open specifications.
New Leadership Team
We welcome two new officers with the new year, Valerie Andrew and Dylan Lang. They join returning officers, Doug Sandy, CTO, Justin Moll, VP of Marketing, and me as President. The new Secretary, Valerie, brings years of leadership experience in the Embedded Computing industry to her new role. She currently has a senior marketing position at Elma and is an active participant in SOSA and VITA. The new treasurer, Dylan, joins us from SAMTEC, where his primary focus is open standards. He is also the Secretary of the COM-HPC technical subcommittee and leads efforts at several embedded computing consortia. These two new officers bring fresh ideas, expertise and a shared commitment to open standards and the importance of collaboration.
Key 2019 Technical Initiatives
In 2018, PICMG launched an important new project, COM-HPC. This new COM specification, led by Christian Eder of Congatec, is under development in a parallel track with existing COM Express efforts. The subcommittee will be developing a next-generation COM standard and the accompanying Carrier Design Guide. The COM-HPC specification is expected to support two different module sizes: one for high-performance computing, the other for embedded computing. Initial plans include the incorporation of a new high-speed connector able to support existing and future interfaces such as PCI Express Gen 4/5 and 100 Gb Ethernet. The specification will target medium- to high-performance server-class processors. Eighteen PICMG member companies have joined the group.
In the summer of 2018, VITA and PICMG agreed to transfer Rugged COM Express to the PICMG organization in order to complete the specification. This specification will define a ruggedized version of PICMG COM.0 for harsh and mission-critical environments. The team is finalizing a solid aluminum-frame design that protects the electronics against environmental influences such as moisture, dust, vibration or EMC radiation, and operates in the extended temperature range of -40°C to + 85°C.
Doug Sandy continues to lead our IIoT initiatives related to the sensor domain. PICMG's approach encourages a firewalled, secure network architecture that supports a variety of synchronization methods and a uniform data model that scales down to the sensor domain through binary encoding. Using well-established practices, the specifications will provide plug-and-play interoperability at the sensor domain to the “last foot” of the IIoT network. We formed an alliance with DMTF in order to extend the Redfish management API to industrial applications. Specification work on both the postage-stamp form factor and the IIoT data model efforts will commence by Q2 of 2019.
In addition to these efforts, further enhancements to MicroTCA and CompactPCI Serial are expected for in 2019.
Looking Ahead
I am confident that increased participation will lead to the innovations which will meet our industry’s evolving needs. I encourage you to contact me at
jess@picmg.org with your questions and ideas about our next 25 years.
Jess Isquith,
PICMG President
