Fitting COMs with everything that application developers need

Congatec has launched a new product family, aReady.COM, which is the first key stage of its innovative aReady. strategy, which delivers a significantly smoother implementation of embedded and edge computing technology with the assistance of high-performance embedded building blocks, ranging from COM to cloud. The company's new aReady.COMs integrate application-ready hypervisor, operating system and IIoT software configurations that customers can assemble according to their needs. Developers can boot these individually configured COMs immediately and then install their applications. This means that the complexity of the integration work below the application layers and for the diverse IIoT functionalities of an embedded and edge computing system is reduced to a minimum. The first COMs are available with the ctrlX OS from Bosch Rexroth.

For customers, these COMs mean that they can count on COMs in a function-validated complete package. The application readiness of this package extends to the virtualisation, OS, and software layer, to which OEMs can seamlessly connect their applications. The COMs decouple system development from application development to the highest degree, resulting in notably 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. 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," explains Tim Henrichs, vice president of Marketing and Business Development 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," explains Andreas Bergbauer, manager Solution Management at congatec.

In terms of hardware, application-ready aReady.COMs provide 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. If, for example, the Linux-based ctrlX OS operating system from Bosch Rexroth is used, the entire ctrlX OS World is also opened up automatically, along with the extensive app portfolio of the ctrlX Store for PLC applications, motion control and communication, as well as engineering tools. Developers can access many 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 COMs based on the COM-HPC standard: 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 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 complete Bosch Rexroth ctrlX OS ecosystem.

Embedded World, Hall 3, Stand 241, from April 9th-11th 2024.