Router Core Board

What is a core board? Why recommend core board development products?

First, what is the core board?
Embedded core board, also known as System-On-Module(SOM) board, is a kind of CPU, memory (DDR), storage (eMMC or FLASH), power management (PMIC, responsible for CPU power-on timing and CPU needs a variety of different voltage output) and other integrated chips packaged together high integration board. Generally, board-to-board connectors, stamp hole welding, goldfinger, COM Express and other forms are connected to the bottom plate, and the core board usually leads out all the functional pins or most of the functional pins of the CPU, and the user only needs to design the peripheral circuit of the functional interface when designing the product, thereby reducing the difficulty of hardware development and saving development time.
In terms of software, the embedded core board (hereinafter referred to as the core board) has generally completed the transplantation and adaptation of Linux (Build Root), Ubuntu, Android, WinCE and other embedded operating systems, while improving each interface driver, it will also adapt to the transplantation and development of Uboot, file system and QT graphical interface. In this way, the final present to the user is a complete operating system with a graphical interface, which is convenient for the user to carry out secondary development.

As a unique embedded board form, the core board has obvious advantages compared with the integrated board, which can not only reduce the difficulty of product design, speed up the time to market of products, but also facilitate product iteration and upgrade and reduce maintenance workload, so it is widely used in the product fields involved in embedded systems. For some experienced software and hardware engineers, may not understand the development of the core board or do not trust the product model of the core board, so whenever there is a new project development will start to design a new board, the software should also be re-ported Uboot, operating system, QT and so on. This method is feasible if you have enough time and experience, but many companies have relatively weak foundations in hardware and underlying drivers, and once there is a mistake in the design process, it is likely to cause the entire project to be shelved and affect the product to market. In the case of insufficient manpower, such work is undoubtedly "repeating the wheel", virtually consuming a lot of manpower and material resources.

In fact, after years of technical development and quality precipitation, Movingcomm's core board has become very mature in terms of integration, stability, professionalism, etc. Movingcomm's enterprise-class board can bring a lot of value to users for product development. Next, let's take a closer look at it from a product development perspective.

Second, embedded ARM terminal product development difficulties

Embedded processor has been widely used, but in the development of terminal products, hardware design, software development, and production maintenance have some unavoidable pain points.

01, hardware design pain points

▲ The design is difficult: with the development of embedded technology, the performance of embedded processors is getting higher and higher, and the development difficulty is getting greater and greater, it is not the era of soft and hard chip microcomputer engineers. From SDRAM to LPDDR4, the memory rate is getting faster and faster, and the number of PCB layers can be met from the early 4 layers to the present 8-12 layers, which has great requirements for high-speed wiring and hardware simulation, and the hidden cost of development investment is high.

▲ Long design cycle: from familiar with CPU startup, memory selection to power architecture design, hundreds of connections, generally need more than half a year to complete hardware design and testing; The post-Internet era has high requirements for product listing efficiency, which can be described as "time is money", and the market will not stop waiting for you because of the difficulty of design.

▲ Complex stability test: high and low temperature test, pressure test, signal integrity test, power on-load test, long-term operation stability test, frequent power off, power on and off test can be completed with complete test equipment and experience. Failure to pass any part of the test may make the design start over, increasing the pressure on engineers.

What if Movingcomm core board is used for these problems?
Movingcomm core board design products, because the high-speed signal routing is all concentrated in the core board level, users only need to carry out peripheral function interface circuit design, so that the product PCB layer from 8-12 layers to 2-4 layers, greatly simplifying the difficulty of hardware design, reduce the development cycle. At the same time, a variety of complex tests for the core modules have been completed by Movingcomm, and the cost of testing will be significantly reduced.

02, software design pain points

▲ Long system transplant cycle: Adapting an operating system that meets the needs of the product requires a long development cycle. File system tailoring, document interpretation, adaptive hardware, BUG debugging, all kinds of work undoubtedly increase the difficulty of development, but also extend the development cycle;

▲ Repeated development: When enterprises have different product research and development projects, they will choose different brands or models of embedded processors according to the characteristics of the products, and the performance and price of these processors are different. If the same processor is used to develop different products, there may be excess or insufficient performance, but if each project chooses a different model of processor development, there will be repeated development and lack of effort. Importantly, the end product enterprise's software development efforts are more suitable for application development, and the hardware-related kernel layer needs to change as the processor changes.

What if Movingcomm core board is used for these problems?

The operating system BSP packages of Movingcomm core board are all output after optimization, repair, tailoring and testing, and are more in line with user needs in terms of usage habits, functional features and stability. Users no longer need to make a BSP that meets their functional needs step by step from the hundreds of gigabytes of data from the original chip factory, but only need to operate according to the software manual from the established development environment provided by Movingcomm, which not only saves the development cycle, but also allows users to focus more on the development of applications.

03, production and maintenance pain points:
▲ Difficult to control the production yield: embedded processor development products PCB layer number, and most of them are high-speed signals, PCB material, material quality, welding quality requirements are very high, if the consistency of production can not be achieved will directly lead to a decline in yield and even cause the board stuck in the field of instability.

▲ Long product maintenance cycle: high-speed signal has high requirements for PCB impedance, and subtle changes in material are likely to lead to adjustment of memory parameters. In addition, the product life cycle of some industries is very long, often more than ten years, in the process of stopping or updating any chip requires hardware and software driver modifications, although it is not difficult, but always have to be maintained, distracting.

What if Movingcomm core board is used for these problems?
Because the main chips such as processor, memory, storage and power management are integrated on the core board, all Movingcomm core boards undergo strict aging and testing before leaving the factory to ensure that the products delivered to the user are qualified, so the stability of the user's product is improved from the side and the production difficulty is reduced. Because the chip production process such as processor, memory and storage is constantly updated and iterative, software update is inevitable. In order to ensure the consistency of the core board, Movingcomm will continue to maintain and upgrade the core board, which indirectly helps users reduce maintenance costs and energy investment.

Closing remarks
Medical, industrial control, transportation, power, Internet of things... Different industries and different products have different needs for embedded processors, some need high performance, some need low cost, and some need rich functional interfaces. In the market of embedded processors, Movingcomm has reached strategic partnerships with many chip manufacturers at home and abroad, such as NXP, Whole Zhi, Ruixin Micro, TI, SAMSUNG, Renesas, etc., and launched a series of core boards for different embedded processor characteristics, including NXP DN product processor core boards for private network acceleration. There are also multimedia universal processor core board; There are both core boards that can be stably operated in medical equipment and industrial sites, and domestic core boards that meet the power system, saving users in different industries the trouble of developing multiple boards for different project needs. The stable and reliable embedded core board, in the product development stage, brings not only the reduction of research and development difficulty, the shortening of the research and development cycle, but also the hidden costs after product mass can be saved in the long run. This is why more and more companies choose to use the core board to develop products, because, for engineers and business owners, it is less worry and effort, but also make the product more stable.