PRODUCTS & TECHNOLOGY
Single Board Embedded Controllers with Multifunction I/O for Custom Development
Four new single board-level embedded devices for custom embedded control and monitoring applications feature a real-time processor, Xilinx Spartan-6 field-programmable gate array (FPGA), analog and digital I/O and more built-in peripherals. The new Single-Board RIO devices from National Instruments provide engineers with off-the-shelf FPGA and real-time processor technology through NI LabView while maintaining the custom I/O often required for high-volume deployments through the option of a RIO mezzanine card connector. The connector provides direct access to FPGA digital input/output (DIO) lines and certain processor-specific functions for mating custom daughter cards. NI Single-Board RIO alleviates the effort of designing an entire system from scratch so designers can focus on the custom parts of their application, such as the I/O. With the new devices, engineers can achieve shorter time-to-market of an off-the-shelf system along with the I/O customization offered by in-house designs, providing the best of both worlds. The devices also feature built-in analog I/O. The devices’ low cost, small form factor, built-in I/O, real-time processor and FPGA provide a suitable platform for embedded monitoring and control applications in industries such as medical and energy. • NI sbRIO-9623: 256 Mbyte of memory, 128 Mbyte RAM, 16 channels 12-bit analog input, 4 channels 12-bit analog output, 4 DIO, 96 RMC DIO • NI sbRIO-9626: 512 Mbyte of memory, 256 Mbyte RAM, 16 channels 16-bit analog input, 4 channels 16-bit analog output, 4 DIO, 96 RMC DIO • NI sbRIO-9633: 256 Mbyte of memory, 128 Mbyte RAM, 16 channels 12-bit analog input, 4 channels 12-bit analog output, 28 DIO • NI sbRIO-9636: 512 Mbyte of memory, 256 Mbyte RAM, 16 channels 16-bit analog input, 4 channels 16-bit analog output, 28 DIO NI reconfigurable I/O (RIO) hardware combined with NI LabVIEW system design software provides a commercial off-the-shelf solution to simplify development and shorten time-to-market when designing advanced control, monitoring and test systems. NI RIO hardware, which includes CompactRIO, NI Single-Board RIO, R Series boards and PXI-based FlexRIO, features an architecture with powerful floating-point processors, reconfigurable FPGAs and modular I/O. Engineers can program all NI RIO hardware components with NI LabVIEW to rapidly create custom timing, signal processing and control for I/O without requiring expertise in low-level hardware description languages or board-level design. National Instruments, Austin, TX. (888) 280-7645. [www.ni.com].
Pico-ITX Embedded Motherboard with Dual-Core ARM Cortex A9 Processor
A new ARM-based Pico-ITX embedded motherboard is equipped with a dual-core ARM Cortex A9. The KTT20/pITX from Kontron is based on the NVIDIA Tegra2 processor and is the first key element to the planned Low power Embedded Architecture Platform (LEAP) offerings. It is specifically designed as a ready-to-use board for videocentric applications that require an extremely low power profile on a small form factor (SFF). OEMs benefit from the KTT20/pITX and the established Pico-ITX ecosystem in terms of minimized time-to-market and TCO for innovative low power applications. With its standards-based form factor and readily available solutions for housing and cooling, the new embedded motherboard KTT20/ pITX is an easy to implement and cost-efficient building block for application-ready platforms. With a maximum power consumption of only three watts, the new module enables fanless designs with an unprecedented performance per watt ratio and rich graphics capabilities for cost-sensitive SFF applications. And with Kontron’s software support, including board support packages (BSPs) for all relevant operating systems, OEMs can create new applications or scale their applications across all processor platforms with minimal efforts. The Kontron Pico-ITX embedded motherboard KTT20/pITX features the highly integrated NVIDIA Tegra 2 1 GHz super processor with two ARM Cortex A9 cores. It provides up to 1 Gbyte of DDR2 system memory. Up to 512 Mbyte of onboard NAND-Flash and a microSD socket provide non-volatile memory for OS, application software and data. The integrated ultra-low-power NVIDIA GeForce GPU delivers graphic performance for mobile devices in high-resolution gaming console quality. A comprehensive range of hardware accelerations for flash, video and audio codecs ensure fluent and brilliant playback of multimedia and web content on two independent displays that can be connected via single channel LVDS with backlight support and DVI-I interface. The KTT20/pITX supports all common monitor and panel types with resolutions of up to 1920 x 1080 (DVI) respectively 1680 x 1050 (LVDS) pixels. For audio, the embedded Pico-ITX motherboard features SPDIF digital out for 5.1 sound plus stereo line-out and linein and MIC. For networking, the Kontron KTT20/pITX features one 10/100/1000 Mbit RJ45 interface. For application-specific extensions, there is a miniPCIe slot and five USB 2.0 ports that can be used to connect peripherals, such as touch panels, Wi-Fi etc. 3x RS-232 and up to 24 configurable GPIOs round off the feature set. Optionally, the Kontron KTT20/pITX includes a battery charger for 3 cell Li-ion batteries and a wide range power supply for up to 15 VDC. The board supports Windows Embedded Compact 7, Linux and Android. Support for the upcoming Windows 8 is planned. Kontron, Poway, CA. (888) 294-4558. [www.kontron.com]. RTC MAGAZINE APRIL 2012
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