About the

Industrial PC

an information page from www.industrial-pc.co.uk

Industrial computers often referred to as an Industrial PC come in many forms. VME, Compact PCI, 19" rack mount, Box PCs, Single board computers, or industrial ATX motherboards.  The term Industrial PC generally refers to a x86 based systems.

Why Use Industrial PCS?
Typically industrial computing equipment is tested to run in harsher environments than standard PC equipment. For example it is fairly common for an industrial PC to be rated at 65 degrees Celsius. Some industrial computers are designed to run in humid, wet, hot, cold or dusty conditions. Connectors used on an industrial PC will often be of a modified design which give improved shock and vibration performance.  By using higher quality parts Industrial PCs generally have greater mean time before failure than standard Desktop PCs.

Industrial Computing Applications
Typical applications for industrial PCs include: Industrial Automation, Marine Control Systems, Data Acquisition Systems, Gaming Machines, Test Equipment, Information Systems,  Point of Sale Systems, Military, Space Applications, Air Traffic Control, etc.

PCI Bus Many Industrial computers, although this is not a compulsory requirement, use the PCI bus in one form or another.  The PCI bus started out as a 32bit, 33Mhz, 5V bus, but has since been updated to include provisions for 64bits, 66Mhz and 3.3V. 32bit PCI Pin Out 64bit PCI Pin Out

ISA Bus
Many older industrial computer systems used the ISA bus. This bus has also been ported to many other formats such as PC104.

AGP Bus
The AGP Bus is not often presented as an externally accessible bus, however it is often used to drive on-board graphics chips.

PCI Express
The PCI Express bus is not commonly found in Industrial PC applications yet, however it looks like this is the way things will go in the future.

Mini Boards
The term Mini Board describes the range of all-in-one boards which are available.  These Mini boards are often referred to as embedded system boards as they are commonly used for specific embedded applications.  These boards typically have support for graphics, keyboard, mouse, LCD, IDE, floppy disk drive, USB, LAN etc built in.  Some mini-boards also make use of the Mini PCI and PC104/+ specs to allow for expansion.  They are produced in a range of sizes but commonly are available with a footprint similar to that of a 3.5" or 5.25" disk drive.

Single Board Computer
The Single Board Computer is based on the PICMG specification.  PICMG is a group that was put together to adapt the PCI specification to industrial computing applications.  Single Board Computers generally plug into a backplane which has (but not limited to) between 2 and 20 slots.  Single board computer based industrial PC systems are available with backplanes which have  PCI, ISA, PCI/ISA, PCI/AGP, PCI64bit/ISA or PISA expansion slots.

PC104/PC104+
The PC104 specification was designed to use a small footprint board which connects to its add-on cards using the ISA bus, albeit on a 2.54mm pitched header rather than the standard ISA connector.  Later developments of the PC104 spec, the PC104+ spec, was to add  a second connector for a PCI bus.  The PC104+ spec is however limited to 4 un-bridged PCI devices, however using bridge chips it is possible to cater for more devices.

Mini PCI
The Mini-PCI slot was developed to allow companies to make and fit small PCI devices such as wireless LAN cards in laptop computers.  Mini-PCI has however managed to find it's way into industrial PCs, however it is nearly always a case that only one slot is provided on a board, and again is generally used for a wireless LAN card, however serial, USB, Modem and other cards are also available in this format.

PMC
The PMC card is a small module that uses the PCI electrical interface, but which was primarily designed to fit onto VME Industrial PC carrier boards.

PISA
PISA boards plugged into a PISA backplane.  Industrial PC systems used the PISA standard which combined ISA and PCI into a single connector to allow for a more compact half length Single Board Computer, but at the same time still retaining both the PCI and ISA buses.  The PISA format is now largely obsolete although there are still some manufacturers offering PISA solutions.

ETX Boards / ETX Modules ETX Boards / ETX Modules provide a means of creating custom designed embedded applications without the need to design hardware at the processor level. ETX Boards/ Modules come in two Parts: A processor module, and a carrier board, the latter of which can be and off the shelf solution or a custom designed board.  Later developments of the ETX Board / ETX module include XTX and COMExpress which both add PCI Express lanes to the ETX Modules range.

Compact PCI Compact PCI is at the high end of of the Industrial PC products.  These boards come in a 3U or 6U format and are slotted into a card cage. 1U=44.45mm therefore 3U = 133.35mm and 6U = 266.7mm

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