Open standards consortium PICMG sits at the center of many embedded and edge computing architectures, and in this interview president Jessica Isquith at Embedded World North America 2025 explains how specifications like COM Express, COM-HPC, CompactPCI Serial, AdvancedTCA and MicroTCA provide interoperable building blocks across markets from telecom to industrial automation. By defining common form factors, connectors and pinouts, PICMG enables interchangeability between vendors, shorter time-to-market and a much more robust ecosystem of module and carrier-board vendors for embedded computing. More technical details on COM-HPC are available at https://www.picmg.org/openstandards/com-hpc/
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A key theme is computer-on-module (COM) design: CPU, memory and high-speed I/O are concentrated on a standardized module, while application-specific carrier boards handle domain-specific interfaces, power conditioning and connectors. COM Express remains widely used, while COM-HPC targets higher I/O density with PCIe Gen5 today and preparation for PCIe Gen6, multi-lane 25 Gbit/s Ethernet, USB4 and rich display and camera interfaces. The result is a modular upgrade path where designers can move to a new processor generation by swapping modules while keeping carrier-level investments stable, which is valuable in embedded lifecycles.
Isquith also dives into the power and thermal challenges that come with shrinking footprints while pushing server-class performance out to the edge. High-TDP x86 and Arm SoCs, dense DDR5 memory and AI workloads demand sophisticated thermal solutions such as conduction-cooled frames, vapor chambers, heat pipes and in some cases liquid-cooling approaches around module and carrier assemblies. The discussion highlights how packaging and mechanical design are now as important as digital pin mapping when deploying high-performance COMs into harsh environments like transportation, robotics and factory automation where uptime and reliability are critical.
Another focus is governance and ecosystem dynamics inside PICMG. With roughly 140 member companies across more than 20 countries, work on new specifications starts when a small group of members brings a market justification and technical concept, which then becomes a full working group following a one-company-one-vote model. PICMG’s portfolio is designed to complement rather than duplicate other standards bodies, so COM-HPC and COM Express coexist with SGET standards such as SMARC and Qseven, and with VITA architectures like VPX and VNX, creating a broad toolkit of interoperable form factors for embedded compute platforms.
Filmed at Embedded World North America 2025, the video follows Isquith around the show floor to concrete examples from member companies displaying COM Express and COM-HPC modules, carrier boards and CompactPCI Serial systems used in communications, industrial control, transportation, gaming and emerging AI-driven robotics. She closes by emphasizing PICMG’s dual mission: not only to develop specifications such as COM-HPC and AdvancedTCA, but also to promote adoption through tools, events and new initiatives that make it easier for engineers to discover, evaluate and deploy open standard embedded computing architectures in their next generation designs.
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