congatec Introduces New Low-Cost, Low-Power ETX/XTX Module

This compact, 95x114 mm XTX module is designed to deliver the best performance-per-watt ratio at the most attractive price level. The total thermal design power (TDP) of the processor/chipset combination is only 8 Watt. As a result of enhanced power management functions, modern applications typically require considerably less than 5 Watt. In conjunction with ACPI 3.0 battery management, such low power requirements enable designers to create mobile embedded applications with a full set of interfaces.

The conga-XA945 supports 4 PCI Express links, 6 USB 2.0 Ports, 2 Serial ATA interfaces, an IDE interface as well as Intel® High Definition Audio. In addition, it comes with a 32-Bit PCI bus, 10/100 BaseT Ethernet, multi master I²C bus, LPC bus and fan control. A DDR2 SODIMM socket enables flexible memory configuration up to a size of 2 GByte.

The conga-XA945 is powered by the 45nm Intel Atom processor N270 that is equipped with 512 KByte L2 cache. The processor operates at 1.6 GHz clock speed and utilizes a 533 MHz front side bus. Thanks to Intel® Speedstep® Technology, this robust CPU will rarely reach its maximum power consumption of 2.5 Watt when used in real-life applications. The Intel Atom processor N270 also supports hyperthreading in order to allow for virtualization. The conga-XA945 can therefore act like a dual-core system and independently operate two operating systems simultaneously.

The Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950, which is integrated in the Mobile Intel 945GSE Express chipset, allows more than 10 GB/s bandwidth for a maximum of 224 MByte video memory allocation. This enables designers to implement power-efficient 32-bit 3D graphics. Both independent graphic pipelines can use either dual-channel (2x24 Bit) LVDS, the two SDVO interfaces or the analog VGA. In addition, the conga-XA945 implements the Embedded Panel Interface (EPI) and the VESA DisplayID standard allowing for automatic recognition of the attached flat panel display.

All congatec modules are equipped with an embedded BIOS and a board controller that enhance embedded features such as system monitoring, watchdog timer and the I²C bus. With the ability to isolate itself from the main x86 processor, these features are also made available in stand-by mode, hence promoting further power saving functionality. In addition to enhanced power management, the congatec embedded BIOS also supports ACPI 3.0 battery management.