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Nathan Collins
15 February 2024
Choosing the right system-on-chip (SoC) is probably your first consideration when designing an embedded product, followed closely by deciding whether to use an off-the-shelf board or design your own.
For the first product in a new line, consider using a commercially available board that features your chosen SoC. This approach may slightly increase the cost per board compared to building a custom board yourself. However, it lets you build on a vendor’s considerable expertise in areas like SoC characteristics, architectural layout, proper bus design, and errata workarounds. Pre-existing boards offer a significant shortcut in getting your product to market as they can minimize prototype iterations and reduce the risk of crucial mistakes in layout. As you gain experience with your chosen silicon and start looking at moving to higher-volume production, you can then consider whether it makes sense to design and manufacture custom boards to reduce costs and introduce custom functionality.
Selecting a CPU architecture is your very first step. While ARM is currently dominating the market, Intel x86 and RISC-V are other possible alternatives. Because toolchains like LLVM and GCC can support all these architectures, your decision will usually depend on factors such as vendor and community support, licensing, power consumption, and clock speeds. Once you’ve selected an architecture, comparing features and prices within that family becomes more straightforward.
Silicon vendors such as AMD, Intel, Nvidia, NXP, and Renesas all offer eval boards to help you evaluate their SoCs. These boards are excellent starting points but there are things to consider.
It’s always advisable to consult with a sales representative before using an eval board in a production product. Their feedback can prevent future issues and, if necessary, direct you to distributors for better long-term alternatives.
The other option for using pre-made boards is to go to a board vendor instead of a silicon vendor. They’re creating boards with the intent they’ll be incorporated into products rather than simply for evaluation. When selecting a board provider, consider all aspects, including one of the most important peripherals, the screen. For a more comprehensive guide on selecting hardware, refer to our paper on best practices: Designing Your First Embedded Linux Device: Choosing Your Hardware.
About KDAB
The KDAB Group is a globally recognized provider for software consulting, development and training, specializing in embedded devices and complex cross-platform desktop applications. In addition to being leading experts in Qt, C++ and 3D technologies for over two decades, KDAB provides deep expertise across the stack, including Linux, Rust and modern UI frameworks. With 100+ employees from 20 countries and offices in Sweden, Germany, USA, France and UK, we serve clients around the world.