Why Use SoM to Develop Products?

Why Use Embedded Core Board Develop Products?

1. What’s SoM?

System-On-Module (SOM) board is embedded core board, which is a highly integrated board that encapsulates chips such as CPU, memory (DDR), storage (eMMC or FLASH), power management (PMIC, responsible for power-on sequence of CPU and output of various voltages required by CPU). It needs connect to a carrier board by board-to-board connector, edge soldering, gold finger, or COM Express. SoM leads out all or most of functional pins of CPU. Product developer only needs to design the peripheral circuit of functional interfaces. It reduces the difficulty of hardware development and shortens development time.

In terms of software, SoM has generally completed the transplantation and adaptation of embedded OS such as Linux (Build Root), Ubuntu, Android, and WinCE. Offer each interface driver, Uboot, file system, and QT graphical interface. Thus user gets a complete operating system with a graphical interface, which is convenient to carry out secondary development.

As an embedded board, SoM has obvious advantages compared with Chip-Down Design. It can reduce the difficulty of product design, speed up the time to market, facilitate product iterative upgrades and reduce maintenance workload. Therefore, SoM are widely used in embedded systems involved product areas. Some experienced software or hardware engineers may not know SoM development or don’t trust SoM product mode. When there is a new project, they use Chip-Down Design. And re-port Uboot, OS, QT, etc. If with sufficient time and rich experience, this method is feasible. But many companies have relatively weak foundations in hardware and underlying drivers. Once there is a mistake in design process, the entire project may be delayed. It will waste a lot of company resources.

With 16 years of technological development and quality management, Forlinx’s SoMs have matured in terms of integration, stability, and professionalism. Our Enterprise-Level SoMs can bring much value to users in product development. Next, let’s take a closer look from a product development perspective.

All-in-one board

System-on-Module

2. Difficulties in development of ARM embedded products

Embedded processors have been widely used. But when develop products, there are some unavoidable pain points in hardware design, software development, and production & maintenance.

01, Hardware design points

Design difficulty: With the development of embedded technology, embedded processor performance is getting higher and higher, compared with the development is more and more difficult, is not a microcontroller engineer hard and soft to eat the era. From SDRAM to LPDDR4, memory rate is getting faster and faster, PCB layer number can be satisfied from the early 4 layers to the present 8–12 layers, high-speed trace and hardware simulation have a great demand, high hidden cost of development investment.

Long Design Cycle: From familiar with CPU start-up, memory selection to power architecture design, moving hundreds of wires, generally need more than half a year to complete hardware design and testing.

Complex Stability Test: High and low-temperature test, pressure test, signal integrity test, power belt test, long-term running stability test, frequent power failure, power switcher testing, etc. need complete test equipment and experience to complete. Failed testing at any one point could re-engineer the design and increase the pressure on engineers.

The above questions, if using the Forlinx SoM?

The use of Forlinx core board design products, because high-speed signal traces are all concentrated in the core board level, users only need to carry out peripheral functional interface circuit design, so that the number of PCB layers from 8–12 layers to 2–4 layers, greatly simplify the hardware design difficulty, reduce the development cycle. At the same time, a variety of complex tests for core modules have been completed by Forlinx, and testing costs will be significantly reduced.

02, The point of software design

Long system porting cycle: Adapting to an operating system that meets the needs of the product requires a long development cycle. File system tailoring, document interpretation, adaptation of hardware, BUG debugging, all kinds of work undoubtedly increased the difficulty of development, but also extended the development cycle.

Repeat development: When an enterprise has different product development projects, it selects different brands or models of embedded processors based on the characteristics of the product, which vary in performance and price. Overperform or underperformance can occur if you develop different products with the same processor, but if you choose a different model of processor development for each project, there will be duplication of development and insufficient effort. Importantly, the end-product enterprise’s software research and development energy is more suitable for application development, hardware-related kernel layer needs to change with the processor changes.

The above questions, if using the Forlinx SoM?

The operating system BSP package of The Forlinx SoM is optimized, repaired, cropped, tested, and exported, and the usage habits, functional features and stability are more in line with user needs. Users no longer need to make a few hundred gigabytes of data from the original chip to meet their functional needs BSP step by step, only from The established development environment provided by Forlinx in accordance with the software manual operation, not only save the development cycle, but also let the user’s energy more focused on the development of applications.

03, Production and maintenance of points:

Production yield control difficult: embedded processor development of product PCB layer, and most of the high-speed signal, PCB material, material quality, welding quality requirements are very high, if the consistency of production will directly lead to the decline of good yield and even cause board instability in the field.

Long product maintenance cycle: high-speed signal on the PCB impedance requirements, material changes are likely to lead to memory parameters adjustment. In addition, some industries have a long product life cycle, moving more than ten years, the process of any chip production or update needs hardware and software-driven modifications, although not difficult but always have to be maintained, distracted.

The above questions, if using the Forlinx SoM?

Because the processor, memory, storage and power management, and other major chips are integrated in the SoM, and All of Forlinx SoMs before the factory will undergo rigorous aging and testing, to ensure delivery to the user is qualified products, so from the side to improve the user’s product stability, reduce its production difficulty. Because the processor, memory, storage, and other chip production processes are constantly updated iteration, software updates are inevitable, Forlinx in order to ensure the consistency of the core board, will continue to maintain the core board upgrades, which indirectly help users reduce maintenance costs and effort.

Conclusion

Medical, industrial control, transportation, power, Internet of Things Different industries, different products on the embedded processor demand is different, some demand high performance, some demand low cost, some demand a wealth of functional interfaces. In the embedded processor market, Forlinx reached a strategic partnership with NXP, Allwinner, Rockchip, TI, SAMSUNG, Renesas, and other domestic and foreign chip originals, for the characteristics of different embedded processors launched a series of SoMs, both dedicated network acceleration NXP DN product processor SoM, but also multimedia universal processor SoM; Eliminate the need for different industry users to develop multiple boards due to different project needs. And stable and reliable embedded core board, in the product development stage, bring not only the reduction of research and development difficulty, research and development cycle shortened, and in the long run can also save the hidden cost of product batch. This is why more and more enterprises choose to use core boards to develop products, because engineers and business owners, are effort-saving, but also to make the product more stable.

Originally published at https://www.forlinx.net.