Single Board Computers

As you may or may not have guessed, single board computers, like the Arm7 sbc, are simply complete computers contained on a single board. Where a motherboard based computer has a single board with interchangeable parts, a single board computer is just that, an all in one, single board computer including all requisite parts.

Single boarders, once the dominant form of computer, have seen substantial decline in the realm of home personal computers, with modern home PCs now being developed with a motherboard and what we call “daughter boards” or a Mezzanine board, wherein disk drive controllers, graphics cards, serial ports and the like are connected separately.

The advantage for home computer manufacturers comes largely down to production cost. When, say, Toshiba puts out a new notebook, they don’t have to mass produce a whole new system, but rather, they can keep mass producing the old mother board, but maybe add one or two different parts.

The custom single board computer has remained popular in industrial applications, however. When a computer is only needed for a dedicated purpose and needs to be custom built to that end, it actually makes more sense, and you can actually save money by going with a single board rather than trying to create the perfect machine out of various components.

As an example, a simple computer built around a microcontroller can be pretty cheap, as it’s not hard at all to find a 32 bit microcontroller for somewhere around five dollars. The cheapest in mass production actually goes for around twenty five cents (it may not be the most powerful microcontroller out there, but it goes to show how inexpensive this stuff can be).

One advantage of single board computers is the availability of backplanes offering nearly every type of slot configuration, whereas motherboards usually offer only the latest or most popular slot technology.

Many technologies are dependant entirely on single board computers, such as the CompactPCI, the PXI, the VMEbus, the VXI, and the PICMG. With an Intel PC, the intelligence and control circuitry are placed into a plug-in board and then inserted into a backplane, resulting in a system with a built in motherboard, but with a backplane determining the slot configuration.

While single board computers offer advantages for industrial use, and while many technologies are incompatible with motherboard based computers, there can be the issue of buying one or several single board computers without spending too much money. Where motherboards can be more easily mass produced, single boarders have to be built around the buyer’s needs, therefore, fewer numbers means that it will cost more money to buy even a single unit.

The answer to this is to simply try to find a lower price. If you don’t shop around a bit, you do stand to lose a few bucks and pass up a great deal. Single boarders do offer advantages, but the price may turn you off if you don’t have a good manufacturer who can cut you a deal.

Vesta Technology offers both custom and standard embedded controllers for industry and commercial applications. VestaTech.com arm7 rtos, embedded boards and 32 bit microcontrollers have been used in data acquisition and monitoring products in industries including agriculture, medical, food processing, semiconductor equipment, and robotics. Vesta Technology also offers embedded system design, embedded application development and manufacturing of its sbc board and Industry Pack products.

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