Aleutia at IPTV World Forum 2011, WES7C, and a Fanless Windows Embedded Set Top Box
Spent the day at IPTV in Kensington Olypmpia and most of the time at the Arrow-organized Windows Embedded 7 seminar. Fascinating presentation by Sylvain Ekel of Microsoft on the potential of Windows Embedded Standard 7 Consumer (or WES7C). Most of the contents were confidential but it echo'd the Engadget editorial from January on STBs as appliance computers and why an embedded media center just makes sense.
Aleutia's focus has always been on bringing fanless PCs and servers to market quickly and we're working on fanless consumer Set Top Boxes for Core i3 and AMD Fusion APUs. What do you guys think?
Aleutia M1 Sealed Fanless Marine PC
This is our best product yet and it offers the best performance per watt of anything we've done. It will succeed the existing P1. With a Dual Core Intel Atom D525 CPU (2 x 1.8GHz) and 4GB of DDR3 RAM it has peak power consumption of just 19W and idle power consumption of 13W. That's testing using a mains AC watt meter with power consumption on DC about 15% lower. This reduced power consumption is achieved by using an Intel embedded chipset (ICH8M) instead of the consumer-oriented Intel NM10 chipset we use on the similar T2 Pro.
It's based on a 3.5" mainboard and is smaller than any of our PCs and has a number of benefits for the marine market:
- Completely Fanless: the case serves as a heatsink, dissipating heat and removing the need for a fan.
- Solid State: available with a range of SSDs to provide a system with no moving parts
- Sealed: most competing marine PCs have ventilation holes but the M1 is fully sealed, protecting it against salty, corrosive air and humidity.
- 4 Com Ports: Boat PCs needs lots of serial RS232 ports to connect to GPS and no one wants to fiddle with USB to serial adapters. The M1 has 4 serial ports.
- -20 C to +45 C Operating Temperature Range: The advanced cooling technology and custom chassis allow for high operating temperature, meaning you can secure this in a cabinet without having to worry about cooling.
- 6-35V Wide Input Power Supply: you don't need a regulator since the M1 can handle your 12V or 24V battery fully charged and nearly empty.
Available later this month from £499 ex VAT.
Aleutia G-Series T56N Fanless Nano ITX AMD Fusion Board
There are AMD Brazos nettops coming out from Giada, Zotac, and I am sure others. For the DIY market, there are mini-itx AMD Brazos boards coming from a variety of major manufacturers (Gigabyte, Asrock, Asus, etc.).
Because so many of our customers are in the embedded market and design Digital Signage software that is based on the system spec, we've decided to go for a long-life cycle Bill of Materials and have switched the APU to a T56N (2 x 1.6GHz) from the E-350. These components have guaranteed availability through 2016 whereas Brazos could be phased out in a year.
It's still nano-itx and we'll have a VGA port as well as the HDMI port. There are pin headers for an RS232 Port as well. We've tested it with Win7 Home Premium, Win7 Embedded Standard, Ubuntu 10.10, and Android 2.2.
Fanless Set Top Box/Media PC in the works:
We're working with a partner to produce a sealed, black aluminium chassis that would serve us a heatsink and enable this system to be completely fanless.
The system will measure: W: 140mm x D:155mm x H:45mm.
With 4GB RAM and no drive, we'd expect to sell the system for approximately £350.
Board Available on Its Own:
The chief advantages over an Ion 2 Platform are:
- Radeon 6250 IGP: full HD
- Runs cool: 18W TDP, 2 x 1.6GHz CPU
- HDMI, VGA Port
- DDR3 RAM (faster, lower cost). The board has one DDR3 SO-DIMM Slot which can take up to 4GB of RAM.
- Long Life Cycle - available through 2016
- Low Cost
Aleutia Returns from Embedded World in Nuremberg
We spent March 1st and 2nd at Europe's largest Embedded PC show, looking at all sorts of low power, industrial grade components to help develop our product roadmap. A few of the highlights:
- AMD Embedded G-Series Technology: Full 1080p playback, low power consumption and fanless with either a passively cooled T56N Dual Core (2 x 1.6GHz) 18W APU or the single core T40N (1.2GHz) 9W APU. G-Series uses long life cycle chipset with availability through 2016. We'll post more about this soon.
- Intel Tunnel Creek: Intel basically sees their Tunnel Creek processors as a defensive move against ARM which is moving past 1GHz and getting more support. These are available through 2018, are super low power (5W system power consumption), and super low TDP (1-2W). You don't need a heatsink to passively cool them - just need some foam to connect them to an aluminium case. Plus the temperature range is ridiculous at -30 C to +85 C.