EPIC/PM: Kontron's Second EPIC Board for Standard PC/104 I/O Assemblies

Kontron Speeds Up: EPIC Now with 1.8 GHz Intel® Pentium® M and ISA-Bus

Long Beach, Calif. and San Diego, January 15, 2007 – Today during VITA’s annual Bus & Boards conference in Long Beach, Kontron announced the introduction of the Kontron EPIC/PM. The Kontron EPIC/PM is the second in its series of EPIC standard boards recognized by the PC/104 Consortium. The Kontron EPIC/PM is based on the 90nm Intel® Pentium® M 745 processor and offers complete PC/104-Plus functionality with both PCI and ISA expansion. As with other Kontron Embedded Module products, the EPIC family of boards maintains the same internal and external I/O connector locations for easy scalability without changing the enclosure design.

Besides all this, the Kontron EPIC/PM boasts an Intel® Pentium® M 745 processor with 1.8 GHz and 2 MB L2 cache for excellent performance. For cost sensitive applications or fanless operation, the Kontron EPIC/PM is also available in ULV Celeron M 373 with 1 GHz (512 KB L2) or Intel processor Celeron 800 MHz (0KB L2) Versions.

The Kontron EPIC/PM offers an unrivalled number of front mounted I/O connections for reduced cabling and ease of accessibility. It includes four high-speed USB 2.0 interfaces, two 10/100 BaseT LAN ports, PS/2 keyboard & mouse, VGA, 5.1 Sound, LPT, and a serial interfaces. This range of functions, similar to that found in a desktop PC motherboard, is inexpensively equipped in one compact package. For solid state operation, a compact flash socket is provided on the front. Additional on-board interfaces include two USB 2.0 interfaces, three COM ports, an 8 pin GPIO interface, EIDE, floppy, and a CompactFlash socket. System memory of up to 2GB is possible with two DDR SODIMM sockets.

VGA and 18 bit LVDS support is handled by Intel’s Extreme Graphics 2 engine which is integrated into the chipset and allows up to 2x 32 MB of UMA graphics memory and dual independent display support. DVO is also supported on board. The LVDS interface is supported by JILI, a universally functional interface from Kontron that is available for all standard panels. This allows OEMs to choose a display that best fits the application without concern for panel interface compatibility.

A watchdog timer, real-time clock, LANBoot and DarkBoot round out the feature set. These features are part of the software tool-suite EVA. EVA (Embedded Value Add) facilitates the use of the product in assembly, maintenance and operation and is included with every Kontron EPIC product.

EPIC/PM will be introduced at the upcoming Embedded World in Europe and Embedded Systems Conference in North America, and will be available from the 2nd quarter of 2007.
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EPIC – The Golden Mean
The EPIC form factor, officially recognized by the PC/104 consortium, sits between the PC/104 and EBX form factors. This is because the newest processors can no longer accept PC/104 size constraints and 5.25“ EBX and Mini-ITX designs are too large for many applications. Thanks to the PC/104 interface, all past and future PC/104 expansion assemblies can be accommodated with state-of-the-art processor performance.. At the same time, additional room is available on the motherboard. This is also useful for the latest technologies like PCI-Express, so that EPIC is an ideal concept for scalability while maintaining legacy support. This new form factor is widely accepted and currently supported by a variety of companies. Information in German is available as of November exclusively at www.kontron.com.

About Kontron:
A global leader in embedded computer technology and mobile rugged solutions, Kontron supplies a diversified customer base of OEMs, system integrators, and application providers in the: automation, test and measurement, communications, medical, gaming and entertainment, military, aerospace, transportation, and energy markets. The company helps its customers considerably reduce their time-to-market and gain a competitive advantage with products including: high-performance open computer platforms and systems, single board computers, human-machine interfaces, and mobile rugged computers and displays. Kontron employs more than 2,300 people worldwide and has manufacturing facilities in Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific. The company is listed on the German TecDAX 30 stock exchange under the symbol "KBC". Kontron is a Premier member in the Intel ® Communications Alliance which means earliest access to leading-edge Intel technologies and privileged engineering support. For additional information on Kontron, please visit www.kontron.com.

Editor Contact
Richard Pugnier
Manager, Marketing Communications
Kontron America
858.623.3006
richard.pugnier@us.kontron.com

Product and Technical Contact
Cliff Moon
Director of Product Marketing, Embedded Computers
Kontron America
858.677.8077
cliff.moon@us.kontron.com

If you would like more information on purchasing one of Kontron’s products, please contact us at 888.294.4558 or sales@us.kontron.com.