SMARC design guide adds PCIe, USB-C support
SGET has released the new design guide for its latest SMARC 2.1.1 specification of computer-on-modules and carrier boards.
The design guide gives embedded systems developers comprehensive guidance for SMARC based carrier boards and now covers all features and interfaces that were implemented with the recent update of the SMARC specification.
The new specification includes support for SerDes signaling over PCIe for Gb Ethernet, as well as full USB-C support using USB 3.2 Gen1 and DisplayPort Alt Mode over a single USB interface.
“New technologies and interfaces require guidance on how to implement them on SMARC carrier board designs,” said Martin Unverdorben, SMARC Module Team Chairman. “The SGET’s Standard Development Team, aka SDT, worked successfully with industry experts to share design examples and implementation best practices in the new design guide. This not only ensures high design quality and design security but also protects OEM investment in Computer-on-Module based on SGET standards long-term.”
“Besides working on the feature implementation and high speed interface layout recommendations we also put great emphasis on the readability and layout of the design guide to make it simpler for developers to find the information they need to design their SMARC carrier boards,” said Carsten Rebmann, editor of the SMARC design guide.
SGET aims to standardize the highly fragmented and proprietary COM market for ARM-based processor technologies.
“Almost 95 percent of ARM-based COMs are not standardized as they offer mostly silicon dedicated pinouts. Such module pinouts are not well defined and documented, highly proprietary without peer review, and constantly being modified,” said Markus Mahl, Product Marketing Manager Boards at MSC Technologies who was a contributor to the new release.
“This makes it nearly impossible for potential users to find a long-term suitable way through this jungle – not to mention the impossibility to re-use or upgrade their designs with next generation silicon, which is a major accelerator for OEM’s ROI,” he said.
The SMARC Design Guide 2.1.1 includes a new chapter on SerDes implementations and provides more examples for fully featured USB-C implementations, including DisplayPort Alt Mode as well as updated and extended options for display interfaces.
A new chapter on module power provides better explanations of the power up process and the four separated power domains. Other chapters have been added on how to implement the RESET_OUT signal and for demonstrating the higher influence of via stubs through high speed signals and added via loss simulations. New considerations for SPI and eSPI topology round off the enhancements.
The new SMARC Design Guide 2.1.1 can be downloaded at https://sget.org/standards/smarc
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