How important is power consumption in embedded systems? On an individual piece of equipment every watt can be important. Reducing power consumption reduces heat, which may eliminate heat sinks, but more importantly improves component life expectancy. When you consider the effect of large quantities of small numbers the effect can be staggering. For example, there are about 10 million medical instruments using embedded processors shipped every year. A power savings of just one watt per new medic...Read More

Intel® Active Management Technology ( Intel® AMT ) is a set of hardware and firmware features that lets administrator access and manage remote systems such as digital signage, point-of-sale (POS) terminals, kiosks, and ATMs.  Among other features, Intel AMT allows administrators to power remote systems on and off, install software updates, and troubleshoot problems.  The recently-released Intel® AMT 6.0 adds a number of important new features to this list.  In thi...Read More

Welcome back to my three-part series on the best of ESC. In part 1 I looked at my favorite small form factor boards and modules. This time I’ll reveal my top high-performance hardware picks.   Let’s start with the Intel® Core™ i7-based boards and modules. My top pick here is the IEI KINO-QM57A Mini-ITX single-board computer (SBC) for digital signage. This is one of the first embedded products to support the brand-new remote KVM (Keyboard, Video and Mouse) featu...Read More