If you’re building an embedded system, why not use a tried-and-true format for your main processing board. That might be a PC-104 board — given that formats versatility. But if a PC motherboard format will work, you can certainly get a well priced and powerful solution. And, industrial grade versions are readily available. Let’s look a few Mini iTX like boards and check out their feature sets.
The 6.7 × 6.7-in. Mini iTX form factor was developed by VIA Technologies in 2001. They are commonly used in small form factor computers and often can be passively cooled due to their low power, so they are quiet. The board’s four mounting holes line up with those in ATX-specification PC motherboards, and the locations of the back-plate and expansion slot are essentially the same. Lately some smaller versions have hit the market.
American Portwell
American Portwell Technology (www.portwell.com) has industrial-grade Mini iTX boards with nearly every Intel processor/chipset imaginable. In May the company added a AMD Fusion G based card. The AMDY-7000 series is said to provide an economical solution for applications that require high-quality graphics output combined with low power consumption.
American Portwell’s AMDY-7002 Mini iTX board
The AMDY-7002 uses a Fusion G T56N dual-core CPU with a single DDR3 SODIMM for up to 4 Gbytes, the Fusion A55E FCH chipset, and the AMD HD6320 discrete GPU supporting dual displays with LVDS/DVI/VGA ports. It also has dual GbE ports, 13 USB 2.0 ports, PCIe and PCI buses, and a half-size Mini-PCIe socket, a CF socket, CFast socket, and five SATA ports. Unfortunately, no price information was available.
Via Technologies
VIA Technologies (www.viaembedded.com) recently announced the VIA VAB-800 Pico-ITX embedded ARM board with an 800-MHz or 1-GHz Freescale ARM Cortex-A8 processor. The card’s 3.937 x 2.835-in. form factor is truly ultra compact and the ruggedized card supports an operating temperature range of -20 to 70 C and takes only 2 W idle and 5 W max. It also features a minimum 7 years lifetime support.
Via’s VAB-800 Pico iTX board
Board support packages for the Android, Ubuntu and Windows Embedded Compact 7 operating systems are available. Rear-panel I/O includes one Mini HDMI and one VGA display port, two USB ports, and one 10/100 Ethernet port. The card has up to 64 Gbytes of eMMC flash memory, 1 Gbyte of DDR3, one SATA port, two single-channel LVDS display ports, two COM ports, CAN Bus, front pin headers for line-in/out and MIC-in, a further two USB 2.0 ports, an SDIO pin header, and eight GPIOs. The VAB-800 costs $270 in single quantity.
Earlier this year, VIA announced the APC, a $49 Android PC powered by a WonderMedia ARM processor. APC integrates memory, storage, and a full set of consumer I/O features into a small-footprint Neo-ITX 6.693 x 3.346-in. motherboard that fits in a Mini-ITX or microATX chassis and can be connected to a HDTV or monitor. The system has the Android OS and applications pre-loaded on NAND flash. The APC board consumes only 4 watts at idle and 13.5 watts maximum and has 2 Gbytes of flash, 512 Mbytes of DDR3, four USB 2.0 ports, a microSD slot, and a 10/100 Ethernet port.
Intel
Intel (www.intel.com) demonstrated a new variant of the Mini-ITX form factor at Computex in Taiwan. They are calling the form factor “Thin Mini-ITX.” Intel sees application for a low profile all-in-one type PCs in VESA type mounted machines, ATMs, casino gaming machines, and plenty of other vertical markets. The main characteristics of Thin Mini-ITX are a Mini-ITX (170 x 170-mm) motherboard size, a 20-mm max height, a 25-mm-high I/O shield, up to 65-W TDP desktop CPU support, internal display connectors, SODIMM memory, and an external power supply.
Intel Thin Mini iTX board
Low-profile Mini-ITX motherboards already exist using lower-power-consumption processors soldered directly to the board. Intel’s specification allows boards to define “keep-out” areas outside of the traditional Mini-ITX motherboard square to fit custom CPU cooling solutions. Intel demonstrated a Socket 1155 motherboard with a heat-pipe and externally mounted heatsink connected to a side-blower fan.
Intel sells a large number of motherboards. One good example is the D425KT Mini iTX board. It uses a passively cooled soldered-down single-core D425 Atom processor with integrated graphics and memory controller and the NM10 Express chipset. The card features HD audio, LVDS and analog VGA video interfaces, eight USB 2.0 ports, two 3-Gbit/s SATA ports, and a 10/100 Ethernet port. Also onboard are two 204-pin DDR3 SODIMM sockets (for up to 4 Gbytes of DRAM), one PCI and one PCIe bus connector. And, you can buy it at Walmart. Yes, Wallmart.com has it in stock for $74.
The Intel D425KT Mini iTX board
Kontron
The recently released KTA70M/mITX embedded Mini-ITX motherboard from Kontron is based on the AMD Embedded R-Series Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) and AMD A70M controller hub for rich media embedded applications. It features discrete-class Radeon HD 7000 series graphics yielding accelerated processing capabilities and leading-edge graphics with the ability to drive up to four displays simultaneously, either as independent displays, or as a single large surface. This makes the new KTA70M/mITX an ideal solution for mid-range to high-performance media rich applications in medical, industrial automation, gaming, and digital signage.
It has soldered dual-core or quad-core APUs with a low thermal design power (TDP) of 25 W. It enables innovative digital signage applications with support for large displays with resolutions up to 4,096 x 2160 pixels and processing capabilities up to 426 GFLOPs. The card has a Secure Asset Management Unit, which allows for hardware-assisted encryption/decryption of content.
Kontron’s KTA70M Mini iTX board
The card offers up to 16 Gbytes of RAM, two DisplayPort and one VGA output, a Gen 2.0 PCI Express x8 PEG port and a Gen 2.0 PCI Express x4 slot, four USB 3.0, ten USB 2.0, two GbE ports, five SATA600 interfaces with RAID 0/1 functionality, and one mSATA socket for onboard SSD. A Trusted Platform Module 1.2 for safety-related applications tops off the feature-set of the new motherboard, along with long-term availability up to 7 years.
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