A New Standards Development Organization for Small Devices Is Born
| |
| Electronics & Telecom Docs |
IHS sells a full selection of standards documents & collections from the industry's top organizations.
To learn more, and for a free quote, please complete the form below. |
|
 |
Last September, five companies announced the formation of the Small Form Factor Special Interest Group (SFF-SIG), a new standards development organization focused on small form factors. |
The group, which was founded by supply chain vendors VIA Technologies, Tri-M Systems and Engineering, WinSystems, Samtec and Octagon Systems, will be developing, adopting and promoting specifications for small circuit boards and related technologies.
SFF-SIG president Colin McCracken says the organization was launched to address a significant need. “There are probably five dozen small-form-factor computers that don’t have a standards organization to manage, distribute and maintain the specifications. In other words, they’re proprietary solutions. With the current trend of ever-shrinking size, the gap between new products and standards organizations is widening. SFF-SIG is already active in solving this vital need.”
While other groups are focused on administering their existing standards, SFF-SIG is unique, says McCracken. “SFF-SIG intends to try to find homes for proprietary implementations to turn them into open specifications that the industry and OEMs can rely on.”
The companies that formed SFF-SIG believe that standardizing these proprietary systems is becoming increasingly important, especially since single-vendor proprietary standards can change suddenly and frequently without notification.
With a mission to meet customer needs starting with input/output (I/O) requirements, SFF-SIG is considering real-world applications that use x86 processors, RISC (reduced instruction set computer) processors, digital signal processors and field-programmable gate array devices where long-term availability is necessary, such as for medical, military/commercial off-the-shelf and industrial-control market segments. The organization also supports low-power and green-computing initiatives.
“There are many large systems companies that want to preserve their investments and product development. For them the stability of managed standards is very important. Even more critical is that a number of these industries are regulated by government agencies… In those cases, going through a process of development, trials and certification is time-consuming and resource-intensive and costs quite a bit of money. So when systems companies go through that process, they don’t want to be surprised by changes that require them to redesign. The stability of the underlying standards is really critical,” McCracken says.
SFF has formed three working groups to address different product categories. The SBC Working Group is focused on new small-form-factor single-board computers, while the Modules Working Group is developing a specification for a new small computer-on-module form factor. In addition, the Stackables Working Group is examining approaches to integrating new high-speed serial technologies into legacy systems to help preserve investments in I/O devices, cabling and enclosure designs.
Because there are so many proprietary solutions on the market, each working group will first survey the various available technologies to determine which offer potential for standardization. Prime candidates will be those that are stable and will only require minimal changes in the future.
McCracken says that these standards will offer companies with proprietary systems a choice. “They can either choose to lock down their design and not change it so that they comply with the standards and stay in compliance with the standard. Or they can choose not to follow the standard and continue to make changes and deviate from the standard. Certainly there are implications for each course of action. Staying with the standard gives advantages. At some level individual vendors like to try to be different and have differentiated solutions in order to innovate and have competitive advantage. But the standards are not trying to lock down and prescribe complete implementations. The standards merely are trying to achieve at least a common set of functionality, interfaces and usability items that allow second sourcing and interchangeability. The standards group still encourages innovation and differentiation, but not when it comes to the interfacing to the product if that’s part of the specification.”
McCracken invites interested parties, including OEM, end user, component vendor, enclosure vendor and embedded-board company representatives to join SFF-SIG. To do so, or to learn more about the organization, email info@sff-sig.org.
|