Kontron microETXexpress-OH computer-on-module

Kontron has announced what it claims is the world's first computer-on-module in the space-saving COM Express compact form factor - the company’s microETXexpress-OH based on the new energy-efficient and highly integrated AMD embedded G-series accelerated processing units.

Integrating a parallel processing and graphics unit, in addition to the processor, this small computer-on-module has extremely high graphics performance.

With DirectX 11 and OpenGL 3.2 support, integrated unified video decoder (UVD 3.0) and long-term availability, it is a solution for SFF applications that require high-performance, high-speed graphics to produce fluid, high-resolution image and video displays.

In addition to gaming and kiosk POS/POI systems, these applications include large display panels, multimedia walls, professional AV equipment, as well as small-sized mobile devices such as test and measurement systems or mobile 3D ultrasound scanners and imaging systems used in medical or automation.

The device has a variety of graphics interfaces making it suitable for applications running multiple screens simultaneously. In addition to LVDS and VGA, the module has three digital display interfaces through which developers can implement DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI.

An additional benefit is super-speed USB 3.0 support over the type 6 pinout. Two USB 3.0 ports allow connection of the most modern peripheral components such as full HD video cameras or fast external storage media which facilitates building small machine vision systems with commercially available standard components, as an example.

The device is scalable in four stages over the bandwidth of the AMD embedded G series APUs: from the 1.2 GHz T44R single-core APU with 512 kb cache and AMD Radeon HD6250 GPU up to the 1.6 GHz dual-core variant T56N with AMD Radeon HD6310 and 2 x 512 Kb cache.

It connects up to 8 Gb of DDR3 RAM via two memory sockets. Compliant with the new COM Express specification, COM.0 rev. 2.0, it implements 6x PCI Express x1 lanes Gen 2.0, 4x SATA 3, gigabit ethernet and 6x USB 2.0. Additionally, two SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports deliver gross data rates that are more than 10 times higher compared to USB 2.0 with up to 5 Gbps (625 Mbps) in SuperSpeed mode.