Configuration Control, BOM freeze, Longevity – These are not just slogans by sales and project managers. these are the terms which can actually save your project from hours of debugging and late night urgent meetings…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A kid asks his programmer dad: “dady, does the sun comes up at day time and sets down at night? “

Dad: “Yes sun”.

Kid: “how come?”

Dad: “it works! So don’t touch it!”

Innovation, creativity and the desire to be always in the forefront of technology brings to great improvements in hardware market and frequent changes off the shelf computing products (COTS products). It can be a minor change like resistor or capacitor, a change in the BIOS version or a more substantial change.

These changes allow hardware manufacturers improve and to maximize efficiency of hardware platforms in addition to having a reduction in costs. These changes In most cases do not affect the product part number, from the eyes of hardware manufacturers as long as the product frame remains the same, small changes do not require a part number change. So the change is invisible to the customer.

For the average user, these changes do not affect (Not consciously anyway) the functionality of the product.

The companies that are most sensitive to those changes are companies that are required to meet international standards such as environmental standards, EMI /RFI and EMF (electromagnetic radiation) standards and medical standards. Changes in hardware required them to repeat the certification tests.

I would like to focus on companies like telecommunications and cyber companies which are not commit to medical or environmental standards, supposedly just install software and run on any hardware platform.

The true meaning and the necessity of saving the configuration reflected in the long run, a change in a hardware revision can cause inconsistency between hardware and software, differences in performance (although the hardware is more advanced) and can even cause a malfunction of the system. In order to return the system to its optimal operation, extra work hours might be required in order to identify the differences and respond.

When this happens, it forces us to define a number of software versions for different hardware versions, and an extensive documentation work must be done in order to be able to support and respond service requests.

EMBEDDED hardware companies are niche in the market of industrial computing. The EMBEDDED hardware companies specialize in providing hardware solutions for long term. Intel, for example, designates from each of its product line a number of products to EMBEDDED customers, for all of these products, such as processors, network cards, etc .. Intel commits to continue manufacturing/selling for at least 7 years. A wide industry of complementary components manufacturers have grown around this commitment of saving configuration.

When a hardware manufacturer is planning a new motherboard designed for the EMBEDDED market he based his design on components that he knows for sure that will not change, and will be available for a long time

 

Number of important terms:

EOL – END OF LIFE –  Notice of termination of production of product, usually an EOL comes with a last time buy period and offer a replacement model ,similar but not identical.

LTB – LAST TIME BUY – The notice period before the end of production in EOL product, usually given a six-month period to allow customers to organize, review and approve alternative product.

LONGEVITY – The minimum time an embedded manufacturer commit to sell the product without changes.

OBSOLETE – A product that it had announced as EOL, the LTB period has passed. It is difficult to obtain the product, who has not prepared and defined alternative product would be forces to purchase stock from unauthorized distributors who keep stock just for those unfortunate actions allowing them to sell at inflated prices and without warranty.

 

EIM E.S.C specializes in providing hardware solutions with long longevity. We accompany the client and help him to define an appropriate hardware solution.

Long term support is an integral part of our DNA, we always focus with a finger on the market pulse in order to identify risks before the call for EOL.

Amnon Haine
Project Manager