Justin Moll Archives

May 18, 2018

IIoT Update

We have exciting progress on our IIoT efforts. First, we are announcing a work register has been formed with the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) to collaborate on IIoT efforts. The DMTF is an industry standards organization striving to simplify the manageability of network accessible technologies.

The alliance between the organizations will help ensure the groups’ standards are coordinated and aligned in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) domain. PICMG is utilizing Redfish® Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to create a meta-data model for IIoT. This model will facilitate a distributed network of sensors, each of which act as a micro-server. So, what does this mean?

Essentially, we are filling in the missing link in the smart factory chain for IIoT interoperability. As you know, PICMG specifications have long-standing usage in industrial automation going back to 1994. Dozens of the organization’s members have high-performance embedded computing products in industrial gateway, controller, and other applications based on specifications such as CompactPCI Serial, COM Express, and more. What we’d like to do is connect these deployed embedded computers with legacy PLCs and all sorts of sensor devices in the smart factory. Using the Redfish RESTful (Representational State Transfer) APIs, our model will utilize a coding approach that is already well known to IT/Web developers. The combination of the meta-data model for a connected sensor network along with a wealth of versatile open standard hardware computing possibilities may finally provide the market a “plug and play” path for end-to-end IIoT interoperability.

Sensors Expo and Demo

PICMG will have a booth at the Sensors Expo next month. We plan to have a simple demo using RESTful commands connecting sensor devices to open up discussions with attendees. Our CTO, Doug Sandy, will also have a speaking slot on our IIoT approach.

Check out the Sensors Expo held in San Jose, CA from June 26-28th. PICMG will have a 10′ x 10′ booth to promote the organization and our IIoT initiative.

If you’d like to meet with a PICMG officer, contact us at [email protected] to set up a meeting at the show.

August 1, 2017

PICMG Turns its Gaze to Asia and Europe

Although PICMG is based in the USA, it truly is a global organization. In fact, the breakdown of membership is fairly evenly distributed. With all of the current PICMG officers located in the USA, we have made an effort to reach out to our Europe and Asian members. In March, we met with dozens and European and other vendors at Embedded World to address the views, strategic roadmaps, and concerns of our members. Last month, I was privileged to visit members in Taiwan, Japan, and China. My trip included Medical and Design shows in Taiwan and Japan as well as Industrial Automation and Telecom shows in China. The members had excellent ideas to continue to improve and enhance existing specifications. It was also very beneficial to understand the local needs of each market. Stay tuned in the coming months for changes to address those needs.

Other efforts included solidifying a barter agreement with a key embedded trade show supplier in Japan and “evangelizing” both PICMG and our members’ products. There was often true excitement from the potential users in seeing the new PICMG Overview Brochure and my pointing to the multiple vendors in their country from the Executive Members list. (This is another benefit of being an Exec Member, we didn’t have space to list everyone, so the Execs are printed on the brochure!)

A key topic during the Asia trip was our Industrial IoT initiative. PICMG has been exploring interest in a specification and have been having open, informal discussions with several members and key contacts at the Industrial IoT Consortium (IoT), Fog Computing, Flexible Factory Project, contacts at Intel and Cisco, and some specialists in IoT security. If you are exploring IoT products, I highly recommend you join the calls, which are open. But note, we are hoping to transition to the new specification phase soon.

If you have any questions on PICMG’s global activities, feel free to contact us at [email protected]

Justin Moll

Vice President of Marketing

PICMG

February 3, 2017

Embedded Tech Trends & PICMG Vision

The Embedded Tech Trends (ETT) media event was held in New Orleans last week and it should come as no surprise that the event was very well attended! The quality of the presentations and media interaction was superb. Three of the PICMG officers were in attendance. With the new PICMG leadership, there were very important messages we wanted to convey to our colleagues in attendance.

Activity & presence

We intend for PICMG to be much more active and be more vocal about our efforts. There are a lot of hidden gems and hot spots of activity for the various PICMG specifications. We want all of you to hear about the successes, the trends, and the upcoming efforts in the community.

Work more closely with the publications & our members

The PICMG leadership wants to work closely with all of the various publications across the electronics spectrum. Do you know of a new program using a PICMG technology? Let us know and when appropriate we will help spread the word!

Closer communication with VITA and other groups

Jess Isquith and I spoke with VITA’s Jerry Gipper about closer collaboration between the groups. With significant overlap of members and many of the same goals, it makes sense for the two organizations to explore areas of collaboration for mutual benefit.

PICMG – Commercial | Industrial | Rugged

You may notice PICMG using these words — Commercial, Industrial, Rugged. While VITA is almost completely Mil/Aero, we want to remind the industry that PICMG is well diversified in Industrial, Transportation, Mil/Aero, Medical, Physics/Research, Energy, Communications, and many other industries.

We are Rugged too

With the incredible success of the xTCA specifications in Communications, many in the industry forget that PICMG has very rugged implementations of CompactPCI/Serial, AdvancedTCA, MicroTCA, PICMG 1.3, and COM Express. CompactPCI Serial for Space and Rugged COM Express are on the way. Let’s not forget that its CompactPCI on the Mars Rover over 225 million kilometers away.

We at PICMG look forward to many exciting advances to come in 2017 and beyond.

Justin Moll, VP of Marketing