Multicore Simplified: Single Board Computing0 pages

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Multicore Simplified:
Single Board Computing
Glenn Beck
Introduction
OEMs face increasing challenges in new
product development. These include
diminishing hardware engineering
resources, a rise in processor
complexity and the perpetual demand
for bringing solutions to market faster
and at a lower cost. Today, design
decisions often include buying silicon
and designing a custom board around
it, or personalizing an off-the-shelf board
from a single board computing (SBC)
vendor. Thankfully, SBC vendors can
ease these challenges by providing the
engineering and manufacturing expertise
to jump-start the OEM’s design by
providing faster time to market, lower
development costs and resolution to the
complex processing solutions.

SBC Market Dynamics
Based on interviews conducted by
Freescale with OEMs, hardware
engineering resources now comprise
25 percent of total cost allocation for
OEMs. Software and system engineers
now make up the majority of the OEMs’
investment. Memories have moved
from DDR1 to DDR3 in just a few
years. PCI was replaced by PCI gen
1 and subsequently by PCI Express®
gen 2. SBCs provide a solution to
these increasing trends in complexities
and development costs for OEM
manufacturers. SBC manufacturers
have the expertise to deal with highspeed design and challenging multicore
processors. They offer a range of
standard form factors and semicustom
capability for a variety of markets and

freescale.com

performance requirements. Combining
Freescale’s Power Architecture®
solutions with the SBC ecosystem
results in a robust mix of form factors
built to service a broad range of
applications and markets and to ease
the “make vs. buy” decision process for
OEMs.

Additionally, they support common
industrial and control applications
such as:

SBC Design Challenges

•t Deterministic operation to execute
instructions in a predetermined order
and at a predetermined time

Customers who develop networkconnected devices for industrial
manufacturing, power system
management, health care facilities,
transportation systems or similar
applications often require real-time,
deterministic, reliable operation in a
harsh environment. To meet these
requirements, high-performance
industrial SBC applications typically
come with the following features:
•t Performance greater than 3000 million
instructions per second (MIPS)
•t High level of integration to simplify
design for seamless video, voice and
network connectivity
•t While fan-cooled systems typically
require processors that consume less
than 30 watts of power, convectioncooled systems typically require
processors that consume less than
10 watts of power
•t Many different input and output (I/O)
options such as Ethernet, RapidIO®,
UART, memory interfaces and serial
ports
•t On-chip floating point unit and
encryption engine for stateful packet
inspection and manipulation, as well
as policy/quality of service (QoS)
enforcement

•t Long product life and operation in
harsh environments with temperatures
ranging from -40ºC to +120º C
•t Real-time operation to detect state
changes and take appropriate actions
within an acceptable timeframe

•t Reliable operation, often with N+1, 2N
or N+M redundancy, depending on
the perceived cost of an outage
•t Secure operation to ensure
unauthorized persons cannot
accidentally or intentionally access or
change data and manipulate control
systems
•t Safe operation to ensure the system
will not harm people or nearby
equipment
•t Ruggedized systems to operate in
harsh environments such as:
t t Locations that are dirty, dusty
or surrounded by dangerous
chemicals
t t Environments that contain high
levels of electromagnetic radio
emissions
t t Remote systems which are difficult
to access for maintenance and
repair—these systems require
designs that minimize parts with
higher failure rates, such as fans, to
reduce time between system-level
failures
t t Systems that are operated by
people who are not necessarily
technology experts, who may
not have access to sophisticated
diagnostic equipment, and who
often do not have time to read a
long instruction manual or take a
training course
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