New PICMG COM Express Plug-and-Play Subcommittee Formed

congatec AG Marketing Manager elected to be Draft Editor; Subcommittee to draft new “COM Express Carrier Design Guide”

Deggendorf, September 28, 2007 – congatec AG, ADLINK Technology Inc. and MSC Vertriebs GmbH have joined together to form a new PICMG subcommittee. Target of this committee is to create a common “COM Express Carrier Design Guide”. This will enable COM Express module interchangeably amongst various vendors, which is currently not the case. Christian Eder, the Draft Editor of the subcommittee, expects this new PICMG carrier board design specification to be released in February 2008.


After the release of the PICMG COM.0 specification (COM Express), several manufacturers have filled the marketplace with a wide variety of COM Express modules. It soon became apparent that a common design guide was required to mitigate carrier board incompatibilities. Therefor congatec, ADLINK and MSC applied to the PICMG for the creation of a subcommittee to define a general design guide.

The basis of this subcommittee began in April 2007 when AAEON, ADLINK, Ampro and congatec started the COM Express PnP Initiative, which focuses on carrier board design. Now this initiative has further evolved to address the incompatibilities seen between different vendors using proprietary carrier board designs by providing a definite specification to increase and stream line the adoption and use of COM Express products.