The writer was instrummental in formulating the Vision of new Market niche in COM business. Identified two unlikely partners with leading technologies crutial to the vision success, and hammered both sides into signing the Partnership Agreement in February 2008.
The press conference that took place in Nürnberg on February 27, attracted some 2 dozens of Editors, mostly from German speaking countries. Two companies, unlikely partners, sometime and up to a point even competitors, it took guts forge the Partnership.
Kontron a renown and well established vendor of Embedded Solutions beside many other things in the IT Industry. With total revenues touching almost €1 Billion per year. Diamond Systems a known vendor in PC/104 ruggedized solutions with especially strong following in Military and Aerospace industries, the size of annually revenues roughly 30-40 times smaller.
Both being Visionaries and Movers saw a ground breaking Opportunity to the beckoning COM market.
They saw End Users studying their respective product catalogues and could not find satisfactory solution to their problems. They would analyse market, searched for Off-the-shelf products, and failed to find all encompassing solution. Because their annual need was exceeding 500-700 units or more. Easily their bosses have resigned and accepted costs and time-to-market loss to develop its own solution. Any after some 2 years of trial and development time, they usually came up to a solution that mostly satisfied the boss, as far as cost of development, resources and lost time-to-market.
Kontron came up with the EXT idea already in 1998, used its best know how of how to build a CPU on a Module, with standard interfaces to the carrier board.
Diamond Systems build standard boards with variants for strategic customers also for years. Its „forte“ are I/O’s, Neptun is a Customized Base Board that accepts ETX and constitutes a complete solution, it is practically Off-the-shelf too. Thus by joining their respective products a solution is being hammered out that allows customers to purchase their „Custom“ BaseBoards Off-the-shelf with already integrated ETX processor module. Thus cutting the End User development time by about 2 years, freeing resources for other tasks, and Cutting Time-to-Market on their Competitors
On February 26, 2008. in Nuremberg, Germany. Diamond Systems Corporation and Kontron, worldwide leaders of embedded I/O and CPU products and technologies respectively announced a strategic partnership at the Embedded World show to deliver high integration “single board” solutions using Kontron ETX modules with Diamond Systems off-the-shelf and custom I/O intensive carrier boards. As a cornerstone of the agreement, Diamond Systems will develop and produce carrier boards to meet the unique requirements of embedded designs requiring analogue and/or digital I/O, extensive serial communications and/or wide-ranging DC power input. Diamond Systems will then select from a wide performance range of Kontron Computer-on-Module (COM) CPU offerings to deliver complete yet flexible, fully integrated solutions to the customer.
Kontron will promote and fully support Diamond Systems by sharing and jointly pursuing sales opportunities, and by providing special support and marketing programs. Diamond Systems will retain primary customer support responsibilities. This announcement enables Diamond Systems to offer OEMs access to superb CPU technology coupled with the best-in-class analogue and digital I/O technology. OEMs and system integrators around the world who build applications in automation, data acquisition, medical, military, transportation, and instrumentation markets now have a unique choice in Diamond Systems for performance flexibility and obsolescence mitigation without having to manage multiple suppliers for carrier board design, contract manufacturing, and off-the-shelf CPU modules.
“We are excited to partner with Diamond Systems to enhance the usage of our leading line of ETX modules within multiple market segments,” said Dirk Finstel, chief technology officer of Kontron Embedded Modules Division. “Products and services from Diamond Systems and Kontron complement one another very well. Even more system OEMs around the world can now transition to COM-based architectures thanks to this cooperation.”
“As the PC/104 I/O leader for the past 15 years, Diamond Systems has helped hundreds of OEMs develop systems with extensive I/O requirements, especially systems required to operate reliably in the harshest environments,” said Jonathan Miller, president of Diamond Systems. “A key factor in the success of the small PC/104 form factor has been the richness of available off-the-shelf I/O. Now, Diamond Systems is building on this background to enable a broad base of OEMs to use Kontron’s flexible, low cost, rugged Computer-On-Module CPUs, by offering both off-the-shelf and custom COM baseboards with extensive I/O capabilities.”
Diamond Systems’ I/O expertise includes analogue I/O (A/D and D/A), digital I/O, serial communications, multifunction networking, and power supply designs with wide input ranges. This expertise easily carries over into the COM domain. For example, the data acquisition circuitry for Diamond Systems’ COM carrier boards utilizes the same proven high-accuracy circuitry found on Diamond Systems’ industry-leading DMM-32X-AT PC/104 module. Even for modest I/O requirements, Diamond Systems has an extensive database of proven I/O designs for cost-sensitive, long lifecycle, and low power applications.
Diamond Systems’ unique Universal Driver programming software for Linux, Windows XP and CE, and QNX operating systems is available to all carrier board customers. This driver complements and greatly extends the basic CPU support software from Kontron by ensuring that the BIOS, basic BSP and I/O driver software all works together out of the box.
There is no reason not to believe that above numbers to be conservative, as COM Market is huge and annually millions of boards/systems are being deployed. Kontron and Diamond systems may recognize this opportunity and step up marketing and Sales efforts, co-ordinated or not, to participate to the fullest extent in this market. In case the COM market develops rapidly over the next 12-24 months, it is conceivable that both companies may step up and deepen its cooperation to properly address each new opportunities or efficiencies that would shorten End User Time-to-market
However this business seem a bit asymmetrical, the writer is getting more and more inquiries from various places mostly associated with Kontron products, who ask about right to distribute the above solution to their customers. This part of business is not projected here yet, and needs to be added over and above the projection.
Neptune
Neptune is an ultra high integration EPIC form factor single board computer combining state-of-the-art CPU and I/O technology with Diamond System’s renowned high accuracy data acquisition circuitry on a single board. Neptune is available with a selection of CPU modules, offering you the perfect combination of price, performance and power. Neptune also offers up to 2GB of DDR/DDR2 DRAM via SODIMM, provides a
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