The advantages are essentially the same as those offered by any other Gen1 COM standard. The sweet spot of the Gen2 COM standard is that it offers additional benefits, specifically cost savings in assembly and testing during mass production compared to any Gen1 standard. Another added advantage is that OSM version 1.1 allows for smaller form factors in terms of the module-to-pin ratio.
Given the significant advantages these benefits offer OEM customers, the OSM standard for Gen2 COMs, published by SGET in December 2020, has resonated deeply within the embedded systems ecosystem. This is reflected in the widespread adoption of the standard by leading embedded systems vendors and its rapid development, as demonstrated by the new 1.1 specification. Martin Steger, Chair of the OSM Standard Development Team (SDT), is optimistic about the future: “The hard work of the past few months has paid off. With the results now published, OSM has matured and is expected to take off as the world’s first Gen2 COM standard, offering an open, scalable, and multi-vendor specification for machine-solderable Computer-on-Modules, with the support of leading embedded computer vendors.”
Such development is only possible through intensive cooperation and close exchange at the highest level. Ansgar Hein, president of SGET, also emphasizes this point: "Our goal as SGET is to provide a space for the development of open standards and to bring together the best international experts on relevant topics." This goal has already been achieved on several occasions with commercially successful standards such as SMARC and Qseven.
The recently released OSM design guide, in particular, offers developers and integrators important approaches for designing open standards modules on their own boards. Carrier board developers benefit from the existing synergies within SGET, where bridges are already being built between semiconductor manufacturers, integrators, and end users within the standards development teams. "The increasing demands for productivity and more powerful applications with maximum flexibility can be met and brought to market quickly and efficiently with standardized OSM modules," says Martin Steger. But that's not all, because COM standards also offer OEMs a longer product lifecycle that extends even beyond the processor's lifespan. Ultimately, this leads to a better return on investment in NRE costs and sustainable system designs.
SGET members Aries, Avnet, Geniatech, F&S, iesy, iWave, and Kontron have already released the first official OSM modules. Currently, application-ready Gen2 computerized modules compliant with the OSM standard are available for the following processors: NXP i.MX 8 M, NXP i.MX 8 Lite, NXP i.MX93, ESP32 DualCore, Rockchip PX30, RZ/G2UL Cortex-A55 Single-Core, and RZ/Five RISC-V AX45MP Single. SGET will provide interested companies with a roadmap for support of additional processors upon request.
The new design guide for OSM specification versions 1.0 and 1.1 is available as a free download.
