Report: slow growth for VME, strong growth for CompactPCI
By John McHale
NATICK, Mass. - Industry analysts at Venture Development Corp. in Natick, Mass., are reporting that the CompactPCI market more than tripled while VME showed slow growth.
In their "The 1997-1998 Worldwide Market for Merchant Computer Boards in Real-Time and Embedded Applications," Venture Development officials reported the 1997 market for real-time and embedded PCI boards was about $320 million, a gain of 34 percent from the previous year. Meanwhile, CompactPCI went from $5 million in 1996 to more than $18 million in 1997.
These gains resulted in some market share loss for VME boards, but even more so for other buses, especially ISA, Venture Development experts report.
Of course VME manufacturers are concerned, but not overly so, says Jim Taylor, group manager at Venture Development Corp. In the military market, CompactPCI has not even made a dent, he says.
The total market for merchant real-time and embedded computer board shipments for passive backplanes, by bus architectures in 1997, was $2.13 billion. VME made up 58.9 percent of that market while ISA was 16.1 percent, PCI was 15 percent, and CompactPCI was 0.8 percent. In dollars VME accounted for $310 million, Taylor says.
