In an ideal world the embedded engineer would be able to specify a board perfectly tailored to their application. But the sheer cost and development timescales involved in bringing up a custom board puts this option out of reach for most projects.

Or does it .  .  .  . not when you use a COM board.
 

Think of a COM as an off-the-shelf building block with all of the functionality if a typical single board computer - CPU, main chipsets, RAM etc but without the usual IO connectors, eg: PS2, D-type etc. Instead the COM plugs into a custom host board using defined interface connections. The host board footprint, connector layout, GPIO and any application specific electronics are all tailored to your target application.  Decoupling the custom aspects of your design onto the host board keeps your design fast and relatively simple. Using a COM design the volume where it becomes commercially viable to have a customer solution drops from hundreds of thousands to less than a hundred. Blue Chip Technology can design and build your host board, our COM Design Service typically takes 30 working days from brief to prototype through to production.  Alternatively we can provide you with all the technical guidance and documentation you need to bring up your host board and are happy to review customer schematics.