What operating system support is available for the new modules?

Daniel Fichter: We will probably support Microsoft in addition to Linux and Android. Incidentally, this also corresponds to our BSP support for our i.MX-6-based Qseven modules with quad-core ARM Cortex A9 processor, so that customers can scale their designs from there in a highly flexible manner and with standardized APIs.

Microsoft's Windows is a big step.

Daniel Fichter: Thanks to our good contact with Microsoft and NXP, we were the first company to successfully port Win10 IoT Core to the i.MX 6. So it goes without saying that we also want to qualify the new module with i.MX 8 for this OS. We were even able to turn our 3.5-inch board level RSB-4411 into a Microsoft Azure Certified IoT Device. We also want to achieve this level for our new Qseven modules, provided that Microsoft and NXP play along.

Are you primarily targeting the Microsoft community?

Daniel Fichter: No. Why should we? But we are analyzing the market comprehensively. And in these analyses we have seen that there is an immense demand for a reliable solution for the extended temperature range in the low-power segment, which has so far been based on Microsoft Windows and would like to continue using it to protect the immense development efforts to date. These OEMs are currently desperately looking for new performance classes to further develop their portfolio and the new processors are highly attractive with their TDP and performance, which extends into the class of Intel Atom processors.

Which Linux distributions does Advantech prefer to support?

Daniel Fichter : Worldwide, Yocto Linux and Android are virtually the standard for NXP i.MX6 and 8, but we also work closely with the British Linux distributor Canonical. Canonical is the company behind Ubuntu, with which Advantech has a strategic partnership, for example to work together on the certification of the company's IoT gateways for the Ubuntu core. This also benefits the embedded standard products such as the new System-on-Modules. So we also have very good support for Ubuntu when it comes to software implementations on our boards.

Does support for Linux end with the operating system?

Daniel Fichter: No! As part of the Embedded Linux & Android Alliance - ELAA for short - founded by Advantech, we also offer our customers a comprehensive software ecosystem ranging from Ubuntu Core to unified remote management platforms and gesture-based GUIs, to name just two generic software solutions from our partners. We also provide our customers with comprehensive software solutions in our Wise-Pass Cloud, because modern embedded systems are networked and obtain large parts of their networked intelligence from clouds.