Designed To Support Unattended Operation, IP65+, And Passive Cooling
Have you ever tried designing a truly embedded x86-based system? We have, and it was a journey full of unexpected pitfalls.
Consider the importance of unattended operation, including resilience in the face of power failures and power voltage fluctuation. Need support for different CPU models? A compact, IP65+ enclosure? Each of these requirements is tricky on its own; taken together, they begin to feel insurmountable. But wandering into previously uncharted territory is half the fun of engineering, and we at Fairwaves are not ones to shy away from a challenge!
Today, we are making the results of more than a year’s worth of development available to the world. With the launch of XCOM, no one ever needs to face this particular set of challenges again.
We designed XCOM to be the ultimate platform for the Fairwaves UmTRX and XTRX Software Defined Radios (SDRs), but it works just as well with other USB, Ethernet, and miniPCIe SDRs. We have already started using the first revision of XCOM in our OpenRAN cellular base stations, and the version that will ship at the end of this campaign will incorporate everything we have learned from that field experience.
We also believe that XCOM has many applications outside of the SDR space. If you have suggestions for how we could make XCOM even more useful for non-SDR projects, please reach out and let us know!
XCOM Handles Demanding CPU And I/O Requirements
These days, a lot of control boards are based on ARM chips because they are small, inexpensive, power-efficient, and embedded-friendly. But what if you need more CPU power or faster I/O than an ARM chip can provide?
What if, for example, you are working in the growing field of Software-Defined Radio (SDR) and the RF processing of your application demands intensive Digital Signal Processing (DSP) and high throughput I/O? You could use a specialized DSP chip or an FPGA, but processing your data on a sufficiently powerful x86 CPU is not only simpler, it also benefits from a more developed software ecosystem and easy virtualization.
Read more: XCOM – COMPACT, EMBEDDED X86 PLATFORM FOR SDR AND OTHER APPLICATIONS
