Portwell announced a Qseven module sporting the wide-temperature variants of Intel's recently announced Atom E6xx processors, with an operating range of -40 to 185 deg. F (-40 to 85 deg. C.). The PQ7-M105IT features an onboard 4GB or 8GB SSD (solid state disk) up to 8GB, eight USB 2.0 ports and four PCI Express x1 lanes, and is offered with an available 3.5-inch carrier board, the company says.

Portwell announced a Qseven module sporting the wide-temperature variants of Intel's recently announced Atom E6xx processors, with an operating range of -40 to 185 deg. F (-40 to 85 deg. C.). The PQ7-M105IT features an onboard 4GB or 8GB SSD (solid state disk) up to 8GB, eight USB 2.0 ports and four PCI Express x1 lanes, and is offered with an available 3.5-inch carrier board, the company says. Intel announced its Atom E6xx earlier this month, and there has already been a flood of embedded modules and boards based on the processors. None of the devices has exploited the E6xx's ability to work with third-party I/O controllers, likely because such devices are not yet available. Instead, all current devices employ Intel's own EG20T (block diagram, here).

Of the announced E6xx products, two have adopted the 2.75 x 2.75-inch (70 x 70mm) Qseven module format: Congatec's Conga-QA6 and Advantech's SOM-3564. Once rare but obviously now becoming pretty common, Qseven modules have a 230-position "golden finger" connector originally designed for laptop graphics cards using Nvidia's MXM (Mobile PCI Express Module) format.

Portwell announced a PQ7-M104G Qseven module earlier this month with Intel's 1.6GHz Atom Z530 or 1.1GHz Z510, along with the SCH US15W northbridge/southbridge chip. Claimed power consumption was under five Watts.

For the new PQ7-M105IT (above), Portwell claims the same sub-five-Watt TDP , but operating range expands from the 32 to 104. deg. F that was quoted for the earlier device to 40 to 185 deg. F. This is thanks to the fact that the module uses the "T" versions of the new E6xxs: the 600MHz E620T (2.7-Watt TDP), the 1.0GHz E640T (3.3-Watt TDP), the 1.3GHz E660T (3.3-Watt TDP), and the 1.6GHz E680T (3.3-Watt TDP).

No Atom E6xx benchmarks have been published anywhere, as far as we can determine. However, we'd expect Portwell's PQ7-M105IT to offer slightly better graphics performance than the PQ7-M104G: That's because the GMA600 graphics built into the E6xx chips are a higher-clocked version of the GMA500 graphics that are part of the SCH US15W.

According to Portwell, the PQ7-M105IT is available with 512MB or 1GB of soldered-on DDR2 memory. The versions with 1GB of RAM are also said to include an onboard 4GB SSD, while an 8GB SSD will be available in the future, the company adds.

Like other Qseven modules, the PQ7-M105IT passes all its signals to and from a baseboard via its "golden finger" connector. Expansion includes four PCI Express x1 lanes, SDVO, CAN, and LPC, while I/O includes gigabit Ethernet, eight USB 2.0 ports, LVDS and SDVO video, and high definition audio, the company says.

A 3.5-inch carrier board

With the launch of the PQ7-M104G earlier this month, Portwell promoted the use of a Mini-ITX carrier board, the 6.7 by 6.7-inch PQ7-C200 (a detailed image may be found here). The PQ7-C200 provides real world interfaces (including dual PS/2 ports, a parallel port, a serial port, a VGA output, and dual gigabit Ethernet ports), and offers a variety of expansion (a Mini PCI connector, a 32-bit PCI expansion slot, a one-lane PCI Express expansion connector, an SD slot, and two SATA ports).

It's likely that the PQ7-C200 also supports the newly announced PQ7-M105IT, though Portwell didn't say. Rather, the company is taking the opportunity to promote another carrier board, the PQ7-C100XL pictured below.

Portwell's PQ7-C100XL

Adopting the "3.5-inch" format that actually measures 5.75 x 4.13 inches, the PQ7-C100XL offers coastline connectors that include VGA output, a serial port (RS232/422/485), a gigabit Ethernet port, and four USB 2.0 ports, according to Portwell. The board is also said to offer two SATA ports, an IrDA port, an LVDS port, and a Mini PCI Express connector.

Features and specifications listed by Portwell for the PQ7-M105IT include:

• Processor — 600MHz E620T (2.7-Watt TDP), 1.0GHz E640T (3.3-Watt TDP), 1.3GHz E660T (3.3-Watt TDP), or 1.6GHz E680T (3.3-Watt TDP).
• Chipset — EG20T
• Memory — 512MB (E620T model) or 1GB of soldered-on DDR2 RAM
• Storage — SSD with 4GB of flash (not on E620T version)
• Expansion:
  • 4 PCI Express x1 interfaces (4 if SATA isn't used)
  • SDVO
  • CAN
  • LPC
• Networking — gigabit Ethernet
• Other I/O:
  • 8 x USB 2.0
  • 1 x LVDS (resolutions to 1280 x 768 pixels)
  • 1 x SDVO (resolutions to 1280 x 1024 pixels)
  • 2 x SATA (1 x SATA if SSD is present)
  • HD audio
• Power — 5VDC input; 5 Watts typical
• Operating temperature — -40 to 185 deg. F (-40 to 85 deg. C.)
• Dimensions — 2.75 x 2.75 inches (70 x 70mm)

Further information

Portwell did not cite pricing, availability, or operating system support for the PQ7-M105IT. More information on the module may be found on the company's website, here, while further information on the PQ7-C100XL carrier board may be found here.

This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.