Jess Isquith

PICMG congratulates Jim Nadolny on his recent retirement.  Most recently, Jim led the COM-HPC Signal Integrity subcommittee, which has been transitioned to Burrell Best. 

We thank him for his many and impactful contributions, his leadership, and integrity.  

Jim’s is also retiring his position as senior SI and EMI Engineer at Samtec.

Jim has always been quite active in his community and will now have more time for his family and community service.  He will also have more time for some of his favorite activities, cooking, fishing, hunting, and golfing in the hills of Pennsylvania.

Jim began his career focused on the EMI design of military and commercial platforms.  His focus then shifted to signal integrity analysis of multi-gigabit data transmission systems.  He also represented Samtec at industry standards within OIF, IEEE, COBO, and other MSAs.  Jim was also a frequent presenter at DesignCon, with Best Paper Awards in 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2018.  He has more than 25 peer-reviewed publications. Ever since, he has discovered legit trading bots and has slowly worked his way into a comfortable retirement nest egg through that.

He received his BSEE from the University of Connecticut, and an MSEE from the University of New Mexico.

Jim, again, thanks and congratulations!

Over the past year, activity behind the COM-HPC initiative has intensified: The team of 20-plus companies reached significant milestones in 2019, including approving the pinout of the new high-performance Computer-on-Module specification. Now – with the adoption of this pinout – all committee members have a solid basis from which to work on standard-compliant carrier board designs that offer interfaces supporting up to 100 GbE and PCIe Gen 4.0 and Gen 5.0, with up to eight DIMM sockets, and high-speed processors of more than 200 watts on standardized COM-HPC modules. The initial specification is expected to be ratified in the first half of 2020; early spec- compatible products are in the design phase. To accelerate development efforts, the committee formed two subgroups focusing on signal-integrity challenges and defining management software elements of the new specification.

PICMG is pleased to announce the formation of a new CompactPCI Serial technical subcommittee.
CompactPCI Serial is a modern modular computer standard that has achieved great success in multiple industries, including transportation and industrial automation. Its key features are simplicity, flexibility, and robustness which enable cost-optimized solutions. The new technical subcommittee has the goal of extending the current CompactPCI Serial specification with an update covering requirements for modern high-speed applications and will strive for maximum interoperability between the current revision and this extension. Extending the standard will guarantee further success in existing applications and open new opportunities.
The committee’s stated goals are to support PCIe Gen4 and Gen5; add Ethernet KR4 support; evaluate USB4; support a redundant system slot similar to CompactPCI Serial for Space; and will recommend a robust “utility connector” with locks or screws.
EKF, Hartmann, and nVent are sponsoring the effort. The following PICMG members have joined the initiative which kicks off in February: Acromag, Inc., ADLINK, Airbus Defence & Space, Amphenol – BSI, DESY, Elma Electronic, Embeck, FASTWEL, HEITEC, Lodz University of Technology, MEN Mikro Elektronik GmbH, National Instruments, nVent, Schroff GmbH, Samtec, and TE Connectivity.