PC/104 CPU boards: New challenges, new opportunities, new frontiers
08.06.2008
Shock, Vibration and Temperature Resistant Computer Systems from Fastwel
Computer Systems used in transportation or industrial environment are very often exposed to permanent vibration load. In these applications, PC/104 architecture itself is a very good choice due to reliable fastening, small size and low weight of PCBs, as well as to PCI and ISA connectors’ reliability.
However, for many applications there is never too much reliability. The most trivial way to increase reliability is soldering normally socketed components. The use of a soldered CPU is quite a routine technology, whereas soldering DRAM chips leads to parallel circuitry routing, and requires addition of several conducting PCB layers.
Moreover, soldered DRAM chips providing 1 GB of memory take about 15% of the PC/104-Plus board usable surface area. In overall – soldering of components considerably complicates design and manufacturing, but drastically improves shock and vibration resistance. For example Fastwel’s CPC1600 withstands vibration level right up to 5G within frequency range 10 to 500 Hz, whereas SBCs with SODIMM memory usually stand the tests at 2G.
There is one more “side effect” of having all the components soldered. Efficiency of additional damp-proof board coating increases while more components are soldered, bringing down the risk of short-circuit caused not only by the condensed moisture, but also by salty mist, metallic particles or corrosion.
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