While Samtec continues to push the boundaries of high-speed data rates with evolving silicon-to-silicon, optics, and microelectronics technologies, one of our all-time bestsellers continues to be our Standard Board-to-Board connector series. Samtec’s B2B connectors are what started it all, and, interestingly enough, are what got the company involved with the PC/104 Consortium.
For those of you that aren’t familiar, PC/104 is an embedded computing standard that was founded in 1992 with the goal of adopting desktop computer technology into embedded applications. As an Industry Standard, PC/104 has helped to define compact form-factors often employed as self-stacking buses. Basically, PC/104 acts as a sort of Lego building block between buses which not only eliminates costs but also conserves system real-estate.
PC/104 has grown a lot in its 25+ years of being an Industry Standard. As Samtec has been there every step of the way, we decided that our web pages could use some reconstruction.
A Reconstructed PC/104
Our Digital Marketing team has produced 4 new web pages making up our new PC/104 Standards section of Samtec.com. The new pages include:
PC/104 Home Page
This page is designed as a landing page for the PC/104 family of Standards. As Samtec continues to develop additional embedded solutions that are PC/104 compliant, this page will continue to expand.
PC/104
The base PC/104™ Standard defines a compact form-factor that can be used in self-stacking buses. This eliminates the cost and bulk of backplanes and card cages.
The PC/104™ Standard extends upon the existing PC bus allowing companies that embed PC technology in limited space applications to have a standardized system architecture as well as a broader range of vendors and vendor support.
PC/104-Plus
PC/104-Plus™ is a specification that was accepted in 1997 by the PC/104™ Consortium and establishes a standard for embedded applications with the use of a high-speed PCI bus.
Like the PC/104™ extends upon the PC bus, the PC/104-Plus™ is an extension of the PC/104™ with all of the same benefits, plus more.
PCI/104-Express
The PCI/104-Express™ specification establishes a standard to use a high-speed PCI Express® bus in embedded applications.
The PC/104™ Consortium chose PCI Express® because of its full PC market adoption, performance, scalability, and growing silicon availability worldwide. It provides a new high-performance physical interface while retaining software compatibility with existing PCI infrastructure.
Future Updates
Within the coming months, our PC/104 page and other Standards pages will be receiving remodels. New updates include:
- New graphics header for PC/104
- Reorganized Test, Debug, and Programming pages
- Samtec Standards Membership Section
- Transmission Protocols page
- And much more…
For more information, please visit the links below or reach out to our Standards and Web Support teams.
