Embedded
Flat design meets high performance
Numerous commercial motherboards are available for 6th generation Intel Core processors (codename Skylake). These are, however, unsuitable for deployment in harsh IoT and industrial environments. Jürgen Jungbauer, product manager single board computer, congatec AG, talks about industrial-grade design motherboards, such as congatec’s Thin Mini-ITX, offering the added-value required for this type of application
around 15 watts can be developed at justifiable costs and within this field, 6th generation Intel Core processors extend the possibilities significantly.
Jürgen Jungbauer I
ndustrial-grade design motherboards deployed in rugged, industrial box PCs, panel PCs and all-in-one systems
frequently use high performance embedded processors. One of the main reasons for this is that OEMs are continually improving the functionality of their devices, machines and equipment by upgrading the software. Their increasingly powerful, feature-laden software requires high-level performance to address graphically animated user interfaces and multi-touch gestures for simplified user control. Connectivity to the Internet of Things or solutions for M2M and Industry 4.0 applications push performance levels even further. These applications need additional data processing and communication capacities – including encryption and virus protection. Plus, they have to have the right processor power to support the display refresh rates needed for graphics with increasingly higher resolutions and optional support of the independent operation of several displays. However, strict limitations exist for integrating processor platforms and these are a question of heat generation. Fanless designs with processor TDPs of up to
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The new Intel Core processors Under the hood, 6th generation System- on-Chip (SoC) processors boast the completely revised Skylake microarchitecture. Compared to the 5th generation (codename Broadwell) this new architecture delivers about ten per cent more overall performance and an 11 per cent increased energy efficiency. Among other things, the fabric which connects the CPU cores, the graphics unit and Last Level Cache (formerly L3 cache) via the ringbus architecture has been optimised. In the U- SoC versions that are relevant for industrial, fanless 15 watt designs, the controllers for display, storage and I/Os are also included. Another new feature in this watt class is the configurable Thermal Design Power (cTDP) which allows SoCs to be finetuned from 7.5 to 15 watts to meet the thermal design of the application. The processors also feature the new Intel Speed Shift technology which allows for faster switching between power states, so that in certain applications a performance boost of 20 per cent to 45 per cent can be gained compared to 5th generation Intel Core processors.
Optimised graphics The performance of the Windows 10 optimised graphics unit has been increased and is now integrated in the new 15 watt SoCs as the Intel 500 Graphics series. This 9th generation Intel chipset graphics supplies up to three independent 4k displays with 60 Hz via DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4 is also supported. Further to this, DirectX 12 support ensures even faster 3D graphics in Windows 10 and an additional video engine has been integrated. This enables encoding and decoding of HEVC, VP8, and VP9 VDENC with minimal CPU load and thus low power consumption.
DDR4 RAM and I/Os A further new feature is the support of DDR4 RAM, which provides much higher bandwidth, works faster and at 1.2 volts is also more energy-efficient than previous 1.35 volt DDR3L RAMs. The memory density has also been doubled, so with two RAM slots up to 32 GB of working memory can now be hosted. And it is to be expected that DDR4 RAM will be available at lower prices in the market than the currently available DDR3 RAM. So considering these performance and price gains, it is highly likely that developers will soon be integrating 6th generation Intel Core processors into their applications.
Industrial-grade motherboards congatec has made the 6th generation Intel Core processors available on its industrial-grade Thin Mini-ITX motherboards. Compared to conventional Mini-ITX motherboards, industrial Thin Mini-ITX motherboards feature a revision free long-term availability of 7+ years, are only 20 mm in height enabling extremely flat designs so that OEMs can integrate this new performance extremely easily and cost-effectively into slim HMIs, panel PCs, all-in-one designs and box PCs. The overall industrial-grade design of the motherboards, in terms of 24/7 reliability, durability, and interfaces as well as remote maintenance and management functions is also impressive.
Services are vital
An industrial-grade design on its own is of little use to OEMs, if support is only available from another time zone with consequent delayed reaction. Other scenarios are even worse, i.e. when services are not offered at all as the series was only produced for a certain period of time or an order from another major client resulted in slightly different requirements. And it can also occur that - despite embedded roadmaps – components are constantly updated or board configurations changed and this makes the consistent serial production of a frozen design for margins of medium-sized industry customers less profitable. Occasionally comprehensive documentation – vital for OEM certification - is missing and OEMs have to source this from all the component manufacturers instead of from the board suppliers.
Another scenario is that software support is terminated on delivery, although UEFI/BIOS updates and driver updates are essential over the entire lifetime of the customer solution to keep IoT-connected applications up to date – especially in terms of security. Services for implementing customer-specific branding or BIOS adjustments for the boot logo or the adaptation of boot routines or displays may be lacking. Board manufacturers like congatec with a consistent and exclusive focus on industrial and embedded applications can therefore make the world of difference in all these facets. And as some industrial customers require specific individual board adaptations in medium-sized production lots and with high long-term availability, the need for this focused expertise becomes even more apparent. To deliver these safely and reliably, OEMs need sophisticated embedded supply chain and lifecycle management, which only a few manufacturers master.
www.congatec.com Components in Electronics July/August 2016 29
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