27-07-2022 | Congatec | Subs & Systems
congatec has entered the high-end industrial workstation and desktop client market by releasing its first modular Micro-ATX compliant carrier board with COM-HPC interface. The board is intended for embedded long-term availability of at least seven years, which removes the design risks, revision demands and supply chain uncertainties of standard or semi-industrial-grade motherboards that are often only deliverable for three to five years. As it is processor socket and vendor-independent, the board may be equipped with any high-end CoM available in COM-HPC Client Size A, B or C, making OEM designs yet more flexible and sustainable. Impressive scalability over the complete range of 12th Generation Intel Core processor-based COM-HPC modules, which it provides in 14 different high-end performance flavours, is only the start of possibilities.
Performance options for the new conga-HPC/uATX carrier board range from the conga-HPC/cALS COM-HPC Client Size C modules, providing the highest embedded client performance with 16-core Intel Core i9 processor currently, to the masters of price/performance optimisation – the conga-HPC/cALP COM-HPC Client Size A modules with Intel Celeron 7305E processor.
The combination of application-ready industrial-grade COMs and carrier boards with tailored cooling solutions and comprehensive BSPs for all leading RTOSes and the real-time hypervisor from Real-Time Systems is ideal for the fastest time-to-market, produces the lowest non-recurring engineering costs, allows customers to react swiftly to changing market demands and lowers the effort to scale the performance of Micro-ATX based systems to a minimum. It enables customers to construct a full product portfolio based on one single carrier concept.
Future upgrade and update options of Micro-ATX-based platforms are design-inherent, delivering maximum performance flexibility, system design security and sustainable long-term availability for application-specifically customised carrier board and system designs. In times of supply chain uncertainties, the option to select any available COM-HPC module is a particular advantage. OEMs profit from not being tied to one particular BGA or LGA processor from a single silicon or Computer-on-Modules vendor, which lowers the supply shortage risk significantly. At the same time, the mechanics and application-specific peripherals can stay as they are with no need for any hardware changes.
“The new industrial-grade COM-HPC carrier board in Micro-ATX form factor ports all benefits of Computer-on-Modules to the high-end industrial and semi-industrial motherboard market. It will progress conventional motherboard-based system designs tailored to a certain processor generation to far more flexibly and sustainably scalable motherboard layouts that utilise Computer-on-Modules. Industrial applications need longer life cycles than three to five years to reduce the NRE costs and to maximise the return on investment of dedicated systems. Being able to switch the processor performance to any future option without the need to re-build the entire system is thus a huge advantage for many industries,” explains Martin Danzer, director product management, congatec.
