Simtec Electronics has announced a thirty percent speed increase for its ATX motherboard form-factor, StrongARM-based single-board computer (SBC). The SBC is intended to be used as a development platform for prototyping applications such as set-top boxes, routers, CD duplicators, MP3 juke boxes, and NAS appliances, and server devices, and is supplied together with a full Debian GNU/Linux operating system,… the company said.

According to Simtec, the “StrongARM 110 Evaluation Board” is based on Intel's 21281 SA110 StrongARM processor and 21285 support chip, along with Acer Labs' M1543c southbridge chip. It supports up to 256MB onboard SDRAM, and its integrated I/O includes dual IDE, USB host interface, and serial and parallel ports; plus, it offers three PCI and three ISA slots for further system expansion.

One particularly noteworthy feature of the SBC is its inclusion of Simtec's ABLE firmware, which is contained in a Flash ROM onboard. According to Simtec, the ABLE firmware implements an x86 emulator that allows the board's StrongARM processor to execute the x86 video BIOS functions contained on most graphic cards, as well as the drivers for a number of common network cards that allow network booting.

Simtec said the support CD-ROM that is supplied with the SBC contains Linux kernels (binaries, patched sources, and patch sets), a Debian GNU/Linux boot disk with an easy-to-install disk image, and a basic netBSD port.

The SBC together with its “full Debian GNU/Linux distribution” is sold for £199.00 (approx. $320 USD), the company said.

The company also offers an ATX development board based on a 56MHz Cirrus Logic 7500FE processor.

 
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