Kontron and congatec create joint carrier board standardization

The two German embedded and edge computing heavyweights, congatec and Kontron, have concluded a cooperation agreement to standardize the design schematics of COM-HPC evaluation carrier boards from both companies, and to publish most of these schematics in public design guides. The goal is to improve design security through standardization, to reduce OEMs’ NRE costs, and to accelerate their time-to-market for new modular high-performance embedded and edge computing solutions based on the new COM-HPC standard.

Konrad Garhammer, COO and CTO at congatec (left) and Michael Riegert, CEO Kontron Europe GmbH and COO IoT Europe, executive board member at Kontron AG (right).

To solve the customers challenges the two German competitors cooperate not only to improve standardization but also to raise supply security through dual sourcing strategies. The global supply bottlenecks have drastically increased OEMs’ sensitivity over the last two years. The combined German design and engineering expertise addresses this need for high supply chain security by improving interoperability through joint carrier board design initiatives. congatec and Kontron will therefore put a distinct focus on plug & play capabilities so that Computer-on-Modules from either vendor can be used on any evaluation carrier board from either company to enable real multi-vendor COM and carrier strategies.

The initial focus of the cooperation between congatec and Kontron is the standardization of evaluation carrier boards for the COM-HPC Client and Server form factors, with further module standards such as COM Express and SMARC to follow. Customers will be able to use not only the design guides but also the carrier board layouts as best practice benchmarks for their own designs. As international threat scenarios have increased, the new standardized and interoperable evaluation carrier boards will follow highest cybersecurity requirements.