VersaLogic Joins Small Form Factor Special Interest Group (SFF-SIG)

Tom Barnum, VersaLogic’s VP of Sales, said, “The embedded industry is in a significant transitional phase. There is a tremendous unmet need for lower power, smaller size platforms, ease of expansion, legacy support, and low cost. The SFF-SIG is specifically targeting these elements.”



Barnum has been focusing his efforts in the Stackables Working Group, whose members are, according to the SFF-SIG charter: “Developing approaches to embracing new high-speed serial technologies into legacy systems in a smooth manner that preserves investments in I/O, cabling, and enclosure designs.” A recent development includes specifications for an interconnect technology that integrates common high-speed and low-speed serial and legacy expansion busses for next generation small form factor embedded products. Called SUMIT™ (Stackable Unified Module Interconnect Technology, pronounced “Sum it”), the scheme provides a stackable, I/O-centric expansion approach that is form-factor independent.



“This is important to VersaLogic in that the connector scheme is ideal for future small form factors platforms,” said Barnum. “The initial board-level specification developed by the group, Express104™, is perfectly served with the SUMIT connector and optimal for today’s embedded applications.” Express104 is an industry standard module using SUMIT expansion and supports an embedded processor plus one or more stackable I/O modules in a very small space. Express104 incorporates PCI Express and USB serial buses and provides a stackable multi-board solution that is neither processor architecture nor chipset dependent. VersaLogic expects to have Express104-compliant product at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston later this year.