Congatec AG presents the Conga-QA computer module
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Congatec product story
Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team
Nov 13, 2008
The Conga-QA is based on the Qseven form factor.
It is fitted with the Intel Atom Z5xx range of processors and the Intel US15W system controller hub.
The Qseven platform has a typical power consumption of < 5W, similar dimensions to a credit card, integrated battery management and ACPI 3.0 power management functions.
These features make the Conga-QA ideal for all mobile applications.
The module provides fast serial differential interfaces such as PCI Express and Sata, although it avoids old legacy interfaces such as EIDE and PCI to ensure future generations of CPUs and chipsets can be used without problems.
It provides 8x USB 2.0, 1x SATA, 1x SDIO, 1x PCIe, LPC bus, IC bus, Gbit Ethernet and high definition audio.
The new module offers up to four Gbyte onboard flash storage as an option for robust mass storage.
The flexible SDIO interface means SD cards can also be used for easy and robust mass storage.
The eight bit bandwidth allows MMC 4.0 cards to be used with a data transfer rate of up to 52 Mbytes.
Storage media cards with functions such as WLAN, Bluetooth and RFID are also available for the SDIO standard.
The Conga-QA is available in two CPU variants.
The less expensive version is based on the Intel Atom Z510 processor with 1.1GHz core frequency and 400MHz front-side and memory bus.
The high-end version contains a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 (with 533MHz front-side and memory bus).
Both versions have a 512k L2 cache and can access 512Mbyte on-board DDR2 storage.
The Intel US15W system controller hub contains the Intel GMA500 graphics engine.
The 3D-capable on-board graphics use a frame buffer of up to 256Mbyte and support DirectX 9.0E and OpenGL 2.0.
Video applications are accelerated by Mpeg2 and Mpeg4 decoding in hardware.
Graphics output is via a 1x24 bit LVDS channel or an SDVO port.
The Conga-QA module uses Vesa standard DisplayID to recognise any flat displays connected.
All Congatec boards are equipped with the Congatec embedded BIOS.
They also contain a board controller which implements some of the embedded BIOS expansions.
Its independence from the x86 processor means functions such as system monitoring or the IC bus are faster and more reliable, even when the system is in standby mode.
The Qseven API (Application Programming Interface) covers functions important to professional applications such as watchdog timer, IC bus, LCD brightness control, BIOS user storage areas or monitoring system temperatures.
This enables Qseven modules from different manufacturers to be flexibly exchanged without any hardware or software modifications.
