Despite its small size, the CM-iPM offers more features than larger SoM alternatives at a competitive cost – starting from $225 including the processor and memory.
It allows the integration of many different types of external electronic devices through PCI and LPC buses, and includes three 5Gbps PCI Express channels, and so it is ideally suited to test, measurement and control applications.
A range of standard and legacy peripheral interfaces are also provided, including six USB2.0 ports, dual LAN (including one gigabit Ethernet channel), PS/2 keyboard and mouse, GPIO, RS232, infrared, SMBus, IDE and Serial ATA. An on-board 512MB flash disk can remove the need for an external hard disk, which greatly improves reliability.
Multimedia support is provided through the on-board Intel ‘Azalia’ High Definition Audio and a PCI Express GMA900 graphics controller supporting dual screen video, VGA, TTL LCD and dual-channel LVDS outputs with 3D and video playback acceleration.
With its high-performance embedded BIOS and support for industrial operating systems, the CM-iPM can look completely unlike a standard PC, with the boot and set-up screens hidden, but accessible by serial port. This can increase the perceived value of the end application.
Anders Electronics’ System-on-Modules are interchangeable, allowing a wide range of performances with modules available on three different processor architectures; ARM, PowerPC and x86. This can save designers months, compared with trying to integrate with a standard SBC or designing their own solution.
Ready-to-run software packages are available for many standard and industrial operating systems, such as Windows XP embedded and Linux, reducing the need to write and debug driver software.
