Compact SBC offers fanless operation

Axiomtek has released the PICO821 Pico-ITX single board computer that supports ultralow-power Intel Atom processor Z510 1.10GHz and Z530 1.60GHz at 400/533 front side bus with the Intel system controller hub US15W.

The PICO821 is a 10cm x 7.2cm embedded board based on Pico-ITX form factor, which the company touts as the world's smallest x86 embedded board. Instead of I/O connectors soldered onto the board edge, the PICO821 provides internal connectors for COM, Gigabit Ethernet, USB, audio, video and more, which provides embedded developers with flexibility.

This small form factor embedded platform offers fanless operation, low-power consumption, compact-size, flexibility and versatile I/O. Its applications include in-vehicle PCs, in-flight entertainment systems, industrial automation systems, and ultra portable devices.

The Intel System Controller Hub US15W features the Intel GMA500 graphics engine, which utilizes up to 256Mbyte frame buffer and supports DirectX 9.0E and OpenGL 2.0. Graphic output is 18/24 bit single-channel LVDS.

The Intel Atom processor Z500 series supports SSE3 (Streaming SIMD Extensions 3) that improves performance on multimedia and gaming applications, as well as hyper-threading technology and Intel Virtualization technology (Intel Atom processor Z530 only), and has low thermal design power (TDP).

The PICO821 provides a full set of I/O features including one 10/100/1000 LAN, one COM port, four USB 2.0 ports and one USB client port, one PATA-100, one CompactFlash Type-II socket, one PS/2 keyboard/mouse, and HD audio. The PICO821 features DDR2 400/533 memory up to 2GB. This energy-saving, RoHS-compliant embedded board will be available end of September, 2009.

- Toni McConnel
Embedded.com

For application notes on SBCs click here.