SolidRun: Developing and Connecting Smart Cities with MicroSoMs

The idea of a “Smart City” is moderately new, and depicts an environment where every supporting facility, foundation, emergency service, and managerial component is joined in real time through a network system that works cohesively to reduce costs and resource consumption and to improve contact between citizens and government. Lately, there has been a lot of action in the city transportation space—reporting on traffic conditions, parking availability, and train schedules, with plenty of signage requirements. “Cities need to quickly collect and analyze data in order to provide its residents with accurate and up-to-date information,” says Dr. Atai Ziv, CEO, SolidRun. Established in 2010, SolidRun is a global leading developer and manufacturer of powerful energy-efficient System on Modules (SOMs) and mini computers that help cities to operate with the most recent and efficient solutions available in the market.

The company’s innovative, compact and embedded solutions are based on ARM processor architecture, and include comprehensive software packages, drivers, and support for major operating systems. The appeal of SolidRun’s SoM/carrier technology is its ready usability by application experts who need processing power, but do not want to be entangled in details surrounding the processor. “We have adopted both the Freescale iMX6 and the Marvell Armada platforms for our SoM,” adds Ziv. “The ability to quickly switch between single, dual, and quad cores provides outstanding flexibility for Smart City applications.” For example, when performing a pilot for aggregation of city traffic volume data, the user might discover the quad core to be unnecessary, and that a dual core is sufficient for the application’s needs. “The reason we are leading the roost is because we can easily downgrade and reduce price points for the technology rollouts,” explains Ziv.

On the other hand, SolidRun can also easily upgrade the SoM in order to support additional applications without requiring changes in the communications infrastructure. SolidRun’s SoMs offer small-footprint size and power consumption, making them easily deployable in wireless, battery-operated systems. “We also offer an environmentally-hardened module for outdoor use that operates under the harshest conditions, with an operating temperature range of -40 to +105 degrees Celsius,” asserts Ziv.