Four-by-four board embeds latest Pentium M

The P60x "4 x 4" is billed as the first single-board computer based on Intel's new Embedded Roadmap Pentium M processor 745 (formerly known as Dothan).

The P60x "4 x 4" is billed as the first single-board computer based on Intel's new Embedded Roadmap Pentium M processor 745 (formerly known as Dothan).

The new busless SBC, measuring just 4 x 4in and consuming only 12W of power, is the world's smallest full-featured Pentium M single-board computer.

The P60x targets embedded industrial PC control and defence applications requiring high-speed numeric, data and video/graphics processing, ultralow power consumption, and scalability.

The US Marine Corps has already selected the P60x for use in its EFV (expeditionary fighting vehicle), formerly known as the advanced amphibious assault vehicle.

The P60x can be used in a stand-alone fashion, or mounted to a single-slot carrier card such as 3U/6U CPCI, VMEbus, ATCA or custom board.

The SBC's tiny form factor enables OEMs to place it closer to the point of control, greatly increasing distributed control performance and reducing cabling complexity.

The SBC's small size also makes it ideal for building high-density, multimodule blades.

In both applications, the board's small size, modular construction, and flexible I/O interfaces makes it field upgradeable, enabling integrators to take advantage of more powerful CPU, memory, and I/O facilities (by swapping in an enhanced P60x) with minimal impact on existing infrastructure.

"Intel has done a phenomenal job with the Pentium M class and we are excited to offer the first SBC to leverage its high-speed processing and power savings capabilities", said Ben Sharfi, President of General Micro Systems.

"Not only is the Pentium M Processor 745 faster than a comparable PowerPC 7447, it consumes less power and comes with the Intel Embedded Roadmap five-year obsolescence guarantee".

"This, together with the Pentium M's notebook-like power savings, battery-backed operational capabilities, and tightly integrated system control, I/O and LAN support chips, make it an ideal processor for embedded applications that require high performance, low power and product stability".

The P60x features a 1.6GHz Pentium M processor 745, which can be upgraded with faster Pentium M processors as they become available.

The ultra-low-voltage (ULV) processor consumes just 12W when operating at full speed, and just 7W under typical operating conditions.

The P60x also uses the rest of Intel's Embedded Roadmap Pentium M chipset, including the 855GME system controller, Hance Rapids I/O hub controller, and 82546 dual Gigabit Ethernet controller.

The Embedded Roadmap guarantees minimum five-year availability for each of these components, a key requirement for embedded applications like defence, telecomms and industrial control with long product lifecycles.

The P60x is equipped with 2Mbyte of L2 cache, 1Gbyte of SDRAM, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, and four video outputs.

It also features four I/O expansion buses, two Ultra DMA-100 IDE ports, two Serial ATA ports, four USB 2.0 ports, two serial ports, AC97 audio, 21 GPIO lines, up to 16Mbyte of BIOS/user Flash, and a large CPLD, which can be used to create custom I/O options.

The P60x offers the same power management functionality found in notebook computers.

The SBC's Advanced Configuration Power Interface (APCI) enables it to suspend applications running in main RAM and save them to battery-backed RAM.

It also enables the P60x to save applications to disk for hibernation when the system is not in use.

To further reduce power consumption, the P60x varies the Pentium M processor's clock frequency and core voltage dynamically.

In standby mode, the self-throttling processor consumes less than 1W, which substantially reduces average power consumption.

In a typical application, for example, average power consumption for a 1.8GHz processor is only about 7W.

The P60x enhances video performance and functionality by providing an onboard video controller equipped with 64Mbyte of memory, which features 2D and 3D graphics acceleration, a resolution of 2048 x 1536, and 24bit colour.

The P60x also provides DVI-D and LVDS ports for direct connection to flat panel and digital displays, and a 4x Advanced Graphic Port (AGP) to support high-end custom video and graphics applications.

To enhance I/O flexibility and simplify integration with existing carrier cards, the P60x provides four I/O expansion buses: a PCI-X bus for access to high-speed system I/O devices; a 32bit, 33MHz PCIbus for access to low-speed user I/O devices; an LPC bus (Low-Pin Card, formerly known as ISAbus) for access to flash and other slow devices; and an SMBus bus for control and status.

The P60x comes in a conduction-cooled package that allows it to be used in systems with no airflow.

The P60x can also be used with a passive heatsink in systems equipped with fans.

Software support for the P60x includes Windows XP/2000, Linux, QNX, and VxWorks.

Back to top