New-Tech Europe Magazine | Q1 2020

Technology Solution Provider - Embedded Platforms

Amir Sherman, Director of Engineering Solutions & Embedded Technology | EMEA | Arrow

Engineering teams are increasingly using specialist platforms to form the basis of their new product designs. This enables them to concentrate on perfecting their own application rather than spending time on the more fundamental elements of the technology. A Technology Solution Provider, such as Arrow Electronics, is able to provide support and guidance through the platform selection process, helping to ensure that the chosen solution meets the needs of the customer’s application and specification. To see an example of this, let’s look at the popular i.MX 8 Family from NXP. Built with advanced media processing, secure domain partitioning and innovative vision processing, the i.MX 8 applications processor family is revolutionizing multiple display automotive applications, industrial systems,

vision, HMI and single-board computers. Many users want to develop a solution based on this family but it is not a simple process to get to production due to the technical competence needed to develop with multi-core , Linux based and DDR3L or DDR4 high end technology . To support the wide variety of i.MX 8 users, Arrow have developed a platform based on a Thor96 community board. The Thor96 is a single-board computer powered by the NXP i.MX 8M SoC, incorporating a quad-core 64-bit Arm-A53, dedicated GPU and VPU, 4K support, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a wide range of I/O. 96Boards is a 32-bit and 64- bit Arm ® Open Platform hosted by Linaro™ with the intension to serve the software/maker and embedded OEM communities. Some customers will be able to develop their own

board using this community board schematic and follow up wp with this design by using Arrow FAE’s for technical support or to custom their own design by using Arrow – eInfochips engineering services. This is the first option with the platform. More information can be found at www.96boards.org and on arrow.com. The second option, for customers who don’t have the time to develop their own board but still want to use the i.MX 8, is to use a SoM – System On Module. The System on Module (or CoM – Computer On Module) is designed to plug into a carrier, or base board, and is generally a small processor module with a CPU and standard I/O capability. The complex effort associated with designing a CPU subsystem is avoided by using SoM and a custom base board. Arrow work with many SoM suppliers

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