The objective of the EMC² (embedded multicore systems for mixed-criticality applications in dynamic and changeable real-time environments) concept was to kill two birds with one stone. Introducing the high-speed PCI Express (PCIe) expansion bus has permitted integration with the latest bandwidth-hungry peripheral functionality, such as video streams. Retaining the PC/104 form factor yet facilitating multiple cores and processors opens up doors to revitalize creaking legacy applications, or to develop entirely new ones with the familiarity of the form factor. The stack-through PCIe interface also allows multiple processor modules to be stacked, in itself multiplying the available cores and/or processors and, compared to the customary backplane solution, saves cost and space.