New-Tech Europe Magazine | Q1 2020

in embedded applications. One of them is especially significant, and that is the long-term availability of the processor series, which Intel has pushed up to 15 years. This promise of high availability is a first in the entire embedded computing sector. It caters to the increased life cycle needs of the transportation and mobility sector, but is also perfect, e.g., for medical devices and industrial controllers, embedded edge clients, and HMIs because it enables extended life cycles at no additional cost to customers. Ultimately, however, the entire market profits from this high availability because naturally no one is excluded from it. Handling the availability leap pragmatically However, not all component manufacturers were able to support the leap from 7 to 15 years, which is why only a few embedded board and module manufacturers have been able to follow this extended long-term availability up to now. congatec is one of the few companies to have dealt intensively with this long-term availability promise and now also offers suitable solutions that can be handled pragmatically. While the company offers boards and modules with a standard availability of 10+ years, this can additionally be extended to 15 years on the basis of a specific long-time buy contract. congatec offers its customers standard arrangements for this. With the corresponding agreement, any components that have already been discontinued at the end of this life cycle are stocked through congatec and financed within the scope of the agreed coverage volume.

Figure 3 : Thanks to the extended longevity and increased performance of the 8th generation Intel Core processors, embedded motherboards offer an ideal platform for long-lasting applications, ranging from automation and medical to transportation, with a high ROI.

Figure 4 : Applications that have special requirements in regards to footprint, scalability and I/Os are best served with Computer-on-Modules, ideally ones based on the most common COM Express standard.

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