Kontron has announced the availability of a headless version of the Kontron PC/104-plus single board computer (SBC) MICROSPACE MSM-eO based on the AMD embedded G-Series processor. The Kontron MICROSPACE MSM-eO-N is a cost-saving and low-power solution for deeply embedded systems that require no display support and graphic requirements. With long-term availability, this space-saving, two-chip solution based on the AMD embedded processor T24L and fusion controller hub A55E is ideal for fanless small form factor (SFF) designs that run purely as number crunchers. OEMs will benefit from reduced energy consumption and a lower bill of material (BoM) for their SFF designs.
The Kontron MICROSPACE MSM-eO-N offers high data processing density with a processor TDP of only 5W. Paired with low energy consumption, the Kontron MICROSPACE MSM-eO-N allows for a significant reduction in the design effort for fanless, maintenance-free designs. Designs such as this are ideal for markets where control computers and data collection and distribution applications are used, including machine-to-machine and motion control applications in industrial automation, distributed data collection systems (smart grids) in energy and embedded assistant systems in transportation.
"Today, highly integrated x86 processors combine the CPU and the graphics on one chip. This results in processor graphics that are even more integrated and with that even more efficient. For customers, however, who have no graphics requirements, this feature is an unnecessary addition, which is reflected in the cost, in the thermal design and in the overall energy consumption, if the board is equipped with this feature set," comments Pascal Péquignot, managing director at Kontron. "With the Kontron MICROSPACE MSM-eO-N we are offering a small form factor SBC that has been optimised to meet the needs of deeply embedded systems and which combines the most up-to-date x86 technology with extremely low energy consumption in a headless design."
The feature set in detail
The Kontron PC/104-plus SBC MICROSPACE MSM-eO-N integrates the single-core AMD T24L processor with 1GHz, which offers high data processing performance with only 5W TDP. With up to 4GB DDR3 RAM the Kontron MICROSPACE MSM-eO-N provides enough resources to accelerate even the most memory-intensive applications. Storage media can be connected via two SATA interfaces for which RAID 0,1 support is available. For extremely space-saving and robust applications a socket for micro SD cards is also available. A Gigabit Ethernet interface allows for direct integration into network structures without additional extension cards. Four USB 2.0 and four serial interfaces (RS232/TTL) are available for connecting numerous application-specific peripherals. To facilitate further application-specific I/Os, the single board computer has eight configurable GPIOs. Via a 32-bit PCI bus connector and a 16-bit ISA bus connector a large range of extension cards, which Kontron has available in its portfolio, can be connected.
The Kontron PC/104-plus SBC MICROSPACE MSM-eO-N is available now and offers Windows, Linux and VxWorks software support, with others available on request.