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Top 5 Reasons You Should Care About PC/104 in 2020 and Beyond
Press Office, VersaLogic Corporation, 04/14/20
It’s a valid question to ask why someone would design using a form factor that was originally created way back in 1987, especially in a world where consumer electronics have conditioned us to expect the latest and greatest in technology each and every year. But, when talking about industrial, military and medical applications, there are still plenty of valid reasons why the PC/104 platform remains strong in 2020 and into the future. Ask yourself – is working with a product that’s stable, reliable, flexible, expandable, rugged and supported with a long (10+ year) product lifecycle – something you’re looking for in your next system design? If so, check out PC/104 single board computers and see how it stacks up! The PC/104 form factor is stackable, rugged, compact, and familiar. The benefits are many, but we’ve compiled our top five:
#1 – Rugged & Reliable
![rugged single board computer with AMD Geode LX800 processor](https://www.versalogic.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/EPM-14_A-300x200.png)
#2 – Long Lasting (Long Term Availability)
Technology is like a river, always flowing and winding its way through the landscape. Some places are raging, full of rapids and rough water, but if you’re willing to take the risk or aren’t concerned about the outcome, those spots are fast and exciting! Industries like medical device manufacturing also have to navigate the river of technology, but their desires are different than the fastest ride. They want to enter the water at the right spot, where it’s calm, tested and most of the dangers are known. They want to look downstream and see a long, stable stretch of water that they can rely on during their journey through the regulatory waters of building medical devices. VersaLogic has been a long time supplier to medical device manufacturing companies all over the world, providing stable, reliable and long term platforms (like the EPM-16 TomCat) to help companies that value long term availability navigate the waters. Using VersaLogic’s MCOTS programs to supply customized products (as needed), lock a board revision or freeze a BOM, along with outstanding Supply Chain Management that keeps an eye out for rough water, notifies you of problems or changes, and anticipates customer requirements by stocking critical component inventory needed to keep delivering you boards for years (or even decades) and help keep in the waters calm. Let VersaLogic be your guide for long term availability.#3 – Vast Ecosystem
What does PC 104 even mean? Well, PC means Personal Computer (this did start in the 80's after all) and 104 is in reference to the 104 pin ISA Bus connector that was used in the original design.![pc 104 consortium logo](https://www.versalogic.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/VL-PC104-Consortium-147w.png)
#4 – Size Matters
SWaP (Size, Weight and Power) is one of the fundamental principles on which the PC/104 form factor was founded. The idea was simple enough, take the power of the “Personal Computer” and make a format that is smaller, more rugged and consumed as little power as possible to meet the demands of the industry. Like with all technology, the pressure to make the next generation of embedded computers smaller and more powerful, fueled by the explosion of miniaturization in electronics over the last 30 years has led to the introduction of many other single board computer standards and sizes. Form factors such as mini ITX (VIA 2001), NUC (Intel, 2013), Nano ITX (VIA, 2003), ETX (Kontron, 2005) and even COM Express (which isn’t a single board computer and requires a development or custom baseboard) which was later released in 2005 by another group of companies making up the PICMG consortium which started in 1994 and of course, the latest, Raspberry Pi (which is NOT an industrial computer). All of these formats found homes and uses, some more than others, and many were heralded as a replacement for PC/104 computers, signaling that the end was near. It turns out few of these formats were actually smaller than PC/104 (90mm x 96mm) footprint; they generally used the same processors (or often parts rated only for commercial temperatures) and offered much of the same performance, but in most cases consumed more power and had shorter lifecycles. For those that were smaller, they lacked the necessary features, expansion and durability. None of them could address the rugged, stackable expansion that PC/104 offers or came with the huge eco-system of expansion options. If size matters to you and the principles of SWaP apply to your next project, take a look at VersaLogic’s line up of low, mid and high performance PC/104 single board computers. VersaLogic is committed to supporting the thousands of design engineers that have built tens of thousands of systems used around the world today in difficult environments performing critical functions.#5 – Not Just ISA Anymore
Why would I use a standard built around the ISA Bus…you say? Well, it was the access to ISA bus expansion, with its flexible, rugged stack-ability, that made PC/104 so successful. Those advantages continue today as the PC/104 standard has grown to include the PCI bus and the PCI Express bus (Gen 1, 2, and 3). Designing with PC/104 today doesn’t mean using the ISA bus. The continued development of the standard and the incorporation of newer features like on-boards eMMC or soldered down RAM continue the legacy of ruggedness in a small size. Additional expansion options like mini PCIe socket(s) can be used for flexible add-on modules like high capacity solid state storage (mSATA), GPS, PoE, AIO, DIO, Serial Communication (RS232, RS422, RS485, CAN), Wi-Fi, Cellular and many more. Pair a reliable and stable single board computer, like the VersaLogic EPMe-30 (Bengal), with its PCIe (OneBank) expansion bus with a 4-port mini PCIe board; giving you up to 5 sockets for flexible mini PCIe expansion, all in a space of roughly 90mm x 96mm x 50mm, that can you can trust in a hostile environment and count on being available for years (or decades) to come.The Future is From the Past – PC/104 Computers
VersaLogic is committed to building rugged PC/104 single board computers. Many of us have worked our whole lives along that stretch of the technological river where stability and reliability are valued, like Old Man River with his long white beard, full of wisdom and knowledge of the past with an eye towards the rivers turns ahead.![rugged single board computer with Intel Kaby Lake processor](https://www.versalogic.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/EPMe-42_A-300x228.png)