These new devices provide the first key stage of the company’s aReady. strategy, which offers significantly smoother implementation of embedded and edge computing technology with the assistance of high-performance embedded building blocks, ranging from Computer-on-Modules (COM) to cloud.
aReady.COMs integrate an application-ready hypervisor, operating system and IIoT software configurations enabling customers to put them together according to their individual requirements.
Developers can boot these individually configured aReady.COMs straight away and then install their applications, which means that the complexity of the integration work below the application layers and for the IIoT functionalities of the embedded and edge computing system is significantly reduced.
The first aReady.COMs are available with the ctrlX OS from Bosch Rexroth. More aReady. products are to follow.
Customers using aReady.COMs will have access to computer-on-modules in a function-validated complete package, the application-readiness of which extends to the virtualisation, OS, and software layer, to which OEMs will be able to connect their applications.
aReady.COMs decouple system development from application development, resulting in significantly faster time-to-market because OEMs can focus completely on application development.
“Our aReady. strategy is congatec’s innovative approach for simplifying the implementation and use of modern basic technologies over the entire life cycle of customer applications. This will raise “application-readiness” as a mark of quality to a whole new level. Moreover, it is not just limited to COMs but even covers everything from COM to cloud,” explained Tim Henrichs, Vice President Marketing & Business Development at congatec.
“Computer-on-modules from congatec and all the services that we offer for it have always been geared towards making the integration of our embedded and edge computing technologies as easy as possible for developers. Our aReady.COM means that we are establishing a new premium level for this application readiness. It makes the use of our modules even more convenient and efficient, because the software building blocks required, both below and alongside the customer application are provided by congatec in application-ready form in the required configuration and function-validation.”
According to Andreas Bergbauer, Manager Solution Management at congatec, “The seamless integration of our hypervisor technology, and our growing portfolio of industrial software along with the integration of operating systems such as ctrlX OS, represent the first key stage of our aReady. strategy.
“Our roadmap also includes a whole host of further fully configurable, application-ready hardware, software and service building blocks, covering everything up to cloud solutions for device management and maintenance. The most important point about all these aReady. products is that they will be an integral component of computer-on-modules, are fully function-validated and are pre-configured to individual requirements from a single source. This kind of comprehensive portfolio for system design can otherwise only be found in dedicated solutions at system level. What we are doing, though, is positioning this solution portfolio much earlier in the value-added chain and therefore making it available for the entire community of embedded and edge computing developers.”
In terms of hardware, application-ready aReady.COMs offer a hypervisor integrated in the firmware and an integrated memory on which the operating system(s) and IIoT applications are pre-installed to individual requirements. Developers can also access a wide range of IoT and cloud apps, including key functions such as firewalls and VPN clients.
For the evaluation of the aReady.COM portfolio, customers can currently choose between two computer-on-modules on the basis of the COM-HPC standard. These are: the COM-HPC conga-aCOM/mRLP Mini Module and the performance-oriented COM-HPC conga-aCOM/cRLP Client Size C Module, both based on the 13th Generation Intel Core processor series (code name ‘Raptor Lake’).
Their software building blocks are application-ready and can be freely combined/configured to provide customers with an adapted subsystem which is precisely tailored to their specific requirements.
The current portfolio includes the hypervisor for system consolidation, the IIoT software for device management, security, multi-site networking and databases, as well as the Bosch Rexroth ctrlX OS ecosystem.
congatec will be progressively expanding this portfolio.
