Interface module

Congetec has available the conga-QA, a compact module using the Atom processor.

The Qseven platform was specially developed with an eye on the latest low power processor technology and demand for small physical size. With a typical consumption of <5 W, mechanical dimensions which are scarcely bigger than a credit card, integrated battery management and ACPI 3.0 power management functions, the conga-QA is said to be suitable 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 that future generations of CPUs and chipsets can also be used.

It provides 8x USB 2.0, 1x SATA, 1x SDIO, 1x PCIe, LPC bus, I²C bus as well as gigabit ethernet and high-fidelity audio. The new module further offers up to 4 GB of onboard flash storage as an option for mass storage.

The flexible SDIO interface means that SD cards can also be used for mass storage. MMC 4.0 cards allow data transfer rates of up to 52 MBps. As well as storage media, cards with functions such as WLAN, Bluetooth, RFID are also available for the SDIO standard.

The device is available in two CPU variants. The cheaper version is based on the Atom Z510 processor with 1.1 GHz core frequency and 400 MHz front-side and memory bus.

The high-end version contains a 1.6 GHz Atom Z530 (with 533 MHz front-side and memory bus). Both versions have a 512 K L2 cache and can access 512 MB onboard DDR2 storage.