EPIC Fills PC/104 Board Gap

May 10, 2004

SBC form factor fills a happy medium between PC/104 and EBX.

PC/104 is too small and EBX is too big, but the new EPIC (Embedded Platform for Industrial Computing) is just right, or so says the founding group of five vendors that includes Ampro, Micro/sys, Octagon, VersaLogic, and WinSystems.

EPIC provides more than twice (29.4 in.²) the space than PC/104 (14.5 in.²). It has plenty of connector space for the EBX boards, yet it's more compact. Also, there is enough open area for large heatsinks and on-board power supplies that PC/104 can't handle alone.

EBX has a large following. It recently took up residence at the PC/104 Consortium. EPIC eventually will fall under its auspices. For now, the open standard can be found at the EPIC Web site.

Though EPIC doesn't currently define interfaces beyond the existing PC/104 Plus PCI and ISA expansion, it eventually will deliver support for newer technologies, such as PCI Express and ExpressCard. Some of the I/O areas offer sufficient space for connectors and cards like ExpressCard and CompactFlash.
www.epic-sbc.org

See associated figure

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

You can send press releases for new products for possible coverage on the website. I am also interested in receiving contributed articles for publishing on our website. Use our template and send to me along with a signed release form.

Check out my blog, AltEmbedded on Electronic Design, as well as his latest articles on this site that are listed below.

You can visit my social media via these links:

I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.