congatec welcomes COM Express 3.1 specification

The modules will be equipped with the new updated 16Gbps COM Express connector and support high-speed interfaces such as PCIe 4.0 and USB 3.2. As upgrades of the already existing family of COM Express Type 6 modules, the new 3.1 compliant modules offer up to 14 cores/20 threads. With these new modules, customers can now give their designs a performance boost that is compliant to this officially ratified specification. This delivers maximum design security and safeguards reliable high-performance roadmaps for existing COM Express designs long into the future.

“The launch of the COM Express 3.1 specification is a huge step in future-proofing this established standard that has been on the market for nearly 18-years. All existing high-performance embedded designs based on COM Express Computer-on-Modules can now receive further performance upgrades in compliance with the standard. Accomplishing this has been one of the most important recent tasks of the PICMG organisation, as customers need to sustainably secure their existing investments in COM Express compliant carrier board designs in these challenging times,” explained Christian Eder, Director Product Marketing at congatec.

Besides the support of PCIe 4.0 the new 3.1 COM Express specification allows further advanced features that were not previously supported, such as USB 4, MIPI-CSI connectors, signal integrity and loss budget information for SATA Gen 3 and SoundWire support. Despite all these improvements COM Express 3.1 Type 6 modules are fully backward compatible with 3.0 modules and carrier boards, ensuring that even older designs can get equipped with latest processor technologies.