As sophisticated medical devices help shift medical procedures from curative to preventative, some of these devices may even be found in patient homes. Computer-on-Modules can help keep pace with innovative needs for quality care.

Medical device manufacturers face a complex and competitive arena of regulation and market requirements. Quick innovation is the mandate, as medical markets follow a path similar to that of consumer electronics where smaller, faster, more functional devices forge the way to market leadership. Medical design is closely tied to advancements in CPU technology that must meet new data or performance requirements, such as higher resolution imaging or higher frame rates.  These complex requirements coupled with time-to-market demands challenge designers to find solutions that meet application requirements and a slate of international medical standards for hardware, software and connectivity.

Computer-on-Modules (COMs) have gained a significant stronghold in medical markets, based on their responsiveness to these issues and more. COMs support medical OEMs in minimizing engineering resources and development time, reducing total cost of ownership, allowing embedded systems suppliers to get to market quickly with a proven platform. Delivering both longevity and performance, COMs offer cutting-edge performance today and provide a solid foundation for evolving designs, scaling applications and maximizing customized design life through multiple product generations.

The COM Express standard presents a significant milestone for developers of medical devices as well as for other OEMs. Defined in July 2005 by PICMG, it established uniformity for module dimensions, pin assignment and connector layout. The standard currently specifies module sizes as basic (125 mm x 95 mm), extended (155 mm x 110 mm) and compact (95 mm x 95 mm). The compact microETXexpress was developed by and proprietary to Kontron thanks in large part to more recent 45 nm chip technology. Beyond this, the newer ultra nanoETXexpress (84 mm x 55 mm) is expected to become part of the PICMG standard shortly.

Essentially the difference between basic and compact or ultra form factors is the physical footprint. The form factors are fully compatible with the COM Express standard in terms of interfaces, pin-out definition and connector placement. Mounting holes line up on each of the modules and the cooling solution concept is identical, so that basic and compact modules are interchangeable on carrier boards. In essence, the form factor has returned to the credit-card sized format of the DIMM PC, although with a new feature set and the greater performance capabilities necessary in today‘s broad range of embedded designs.

Smaller Devices Drive Market Growth

Applications designed for portability are driving medical equipment market growth. New smaller and more portable equipment is inspired largely by the shrinking of components that can go into a design, setting expectations for small, high-performance devices in many medical arenas. COMs support this design path very well, allowing developers to shrink applications by handling high-bandwidth processing that once required a much larger single board computer.

In turn, “take everywhere” diagnostic tools are being pioneered due to small form factor advances in power and performance. These tools provide low power consumption, high efficiency through extended battery life, and fast, high-precision computing enabling fine detail activities such as precision laser control. While there are a number of options to consider, today’s medical device designers are consistently turning to COMs because of their ability to deliver high-level processing performance and I/O bandwidth within a compact form factor.

Image Clarity Translates into Better Care

Figure 1: This image illustrates the range of COM Express-compatible form factors, including compact, micro and nano options.

Today’s portable medical devices cannot sacrifice image quality. In fact, they often are   required to deliver superior graphics for use by medical personnel to make emergency diagnoses, in life and death situations. Designers have several options in the COM Express standard to achieve this level of performance, including the microETXexpress and nanoETXexpress families of COM Express-compatible modules following the Type 1 and Type 2 pinouts defined by PICMG (Figure 1). Equipped with space- and energy-saving 32 nm and 45 nm processors, the newest COMs offer higher performance-per-watt standards for medical imaging and diagnostic applications. These smaller and ultra-small COM form factors are well suited to environments with high demands on data processing and/or multimedia conversion and output. These form factors can also be used to facilitate even smaller handheld devices in the emergency vehicle or the technician’s pocket.

Advanced processing technologies have brought about further improvements in the amount of performance small form factors can deliver and the amount of power they can save. Ultra portable devices—warranting extremely low power coupled with exceptional graphics performance—are a good match for the power-to-performance ratios enabled by the 45 nm Atom processor. With clock speeds between 1.1 GHz and 1.6 GHz, the 45 nm Atom architecture achieves fast performance in a sub 5 watt thermal power envelope. The power-optimized front side bus (up to 533 MHz) provides faster data transfer, which has been a proven solution for “on the fly” imaging tools or fist-held devices that scan and transmit images of an injured person en route to the hospital or even while still at the scene. Overall, this processor technology enables the development of energy-saving, high-end graphics devices based on the Intel Atom processor and the Intel System Controller Hub US15W. For example, a compact COM Express Type 2-compatible Computer-on-Module with the new second-generation Atom processor, is used to accelerate the development of ultra-low-power embedded appliances such as compact ultrasound devices (Figure 2).

Figure 2: The Kontron microETXexpress-PV incorporates Dual Core Atom technology, and offers native LVDS (low voltage differential signaling) and simultaneous VGA (video graphics array) support in a compact COM Express – compatible, Pin-out Type 2 module.

Newer COMs that integrate the recently introduced Intel Core i7 architecture deliver even greater design flexibility in terms of both performance and onboard features. Based on the 32 nm manufacturing process, these COMs boast exceptional performance per watt, lower power consumption and heat dissipation. Core i7-based COMs solutions utilize an efficient two-chip solution for enhanced signal integrity and minimized board space that enable higher performance in smaller, power-constrained portable designs. Suitable for high-bandwidth medical imaging applications, this technology also delivers significantly enhanced integrated graphics capabilities and data flow performance and can now support multiple graphical and multimedia functions. Devices that recharge more frequently, for instance a room-to-room patient monitor, can tolerate a little more power in their design. Core i7-based modules such as those based on the ETX specification, with an estimated 20W-40W power consumption, are appropriate for medical diagnostics where power is a concern, but where there is also a greater need for fast image capture and manipulation (Figure 3).

Fast Product Development

Given that development, testing, regulatory review and certification can take anywhere from 24 to 26 months from project inception to volume ship date, time-to-market is certainly a primary challenge for medical designers. Costs must be kept in control, which requires a keen eye on managing research and development cycles as well as the costly and time-consuming efforts that can go hand-in-hand with FDA review. Focusing on core competencies and leveraging tools that speed the process helps designers meet their application and market window goals, helping them build stand-out products and maintain a competitive edge in various areas of medical specialty.

One such tool is the Kontron nanoETXexpress Starter Kit for Wind River VxWorks. This Starter Kit is optimized for the VxWorks Real Time Operating System (RTOS) and provides specialized hardware support that includes graphics requirements, which have become so critical to medical device manufacturers. Designed to enable easy and efficient development and validation of real-time appliances based on the smallest x86 solutions, the Intel Atom-based COM Express-compatible Starter Kit is preconfigured with the Kontron nanoETXexpress-SP Computer-on-Module, featuring the Atom Z530 (1.6 GHz) processor. The Starter Kit for VxWorks allows developers to address critical issues such as integration costs, time-to-market and long-term support, right from the start of platform evaluation.

Transitioning between ETX and COM Express

To accommodate new features and performance in medical devices, a COMs-based design can be upgraded by switching out CPU cores. Upgrades can be made within a product family, such as switching cores within COM Express module to COM Express module. Alternately, the design can be upgraded within the overall COM specification—moving from legacy technology such as ETX into more current I/Os and interfaces found in COM Express. This type of upgrade is not a swap of the core CPU module, but a full exchange of the implemented COMs technology and would require a new carrier board. Similarities to the ETX layout ensure designers would be able to make this change and easily leverage the compatible software technology already developed.

Designers may want to consider a deeper upgrade if the evolution of their device warrants greater performance and needs to be positioned for additional longer-term generations of product. ETX designs can be ported into COM Express. For the medical market, designs are most currently using the ETX-PM, which achieves high-end computing performance with low power consumption. Designers can transition to COM Express via the microETXexpress-PV, an economical Atom-based 45 nm solution that establishes a path forward including consistent feature support and options for increased performance and power savings. Also, COM Express heatspreader dimensions are standardized, ensuring easy control of heat dissipation and an important consideration in achieving true interchangeability for the long term.

Proven COMs Move with the Market

Figure 3: The Kontron ETXexpress-AI product family offers a comprehensive range of interfaces via the COM Express COM.0 Type 2 connector, supporting up to 2 x 4 Gbyte of dual channel DDR3 SO-DIMM modules with ECC. Graphics performance can be integrated via 1x PCI Express Gen 2 graphics (PEG), also configurable as 2x PCIe x8, 6x PCI Express x1, 4x Serial ATA, 1x PATA, 8x USB 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, dual-channel LVDS, VGA and Intel High Definition Audio.

Medical designers have a long and complex list of preferences and requirements associated with the components designed into their products. With applications that require long life platforms available for ten years or more, lifecycle, program and supply chain management are critical to the long-term viability of any given device. Components are chosen not only for their appropriate lifecycle, but also for their availability and support through lengthy FDA approval processes and decades of anticipated production.

As a result, active steps are being taken by manufacturers working to extend life beyond the basic ten-year requirement. Intel is effectively supporting this goal by offering an extended seven-year life commitment for selected processors and chipsets, improving availability over its previous five-year assurance. Special arrangements can extend component availability even further and some products are being developed specifically to fill this niche. For example, newer COMs include a CPU and chipset bundle slated to be available through at minimum 2015.

Technology advances will continue to fuel evolution and growth for medical markets. Newer display capabilities, improved design flexibility with new UEFI BIOS incorporating code based on C programming language, and faster I/O such as USB 3.0 are likely to impact expectations for performance of even the smallest medical devices. Additional pinout options for COMs are anticipated along with lower-power features, enabling medical OEMs to deliver technology and devices geared to very specific application areas. For example, lower-power design can benefit devices that are smaller, more user-friendly and even more mobile—facilitating powerful computing abilities and new medical services to areas requiring emergency response even where conditions are rigorous or third world.

With ongoing advances, medical devices—even the smallest ones—are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Ultrasound, for example, is no longer limited by two dimensional stationary performance, but can deliver 3D images on the go through portable cart-based devices or even handheld units. New processing technologies such as the Intel Core i7 and smaller form factor COMs such as nanoETXexpress are enabling a new generation of small form factor products, continuing the migration to smaller, lower-power devices.

As sophisticated medical devices help shift medical procedures from curative to preventative, some of these devices may even be found in patient homes. Forward thinking that takes into consideration an aging population and ways to manage chronic health conditions will keep medical designers innovating, developing smaller, less intrusive devices that improve lives.

Kontron
Poway, CA.
(888) 294-4558.
[ www.kontron.com].