Ampro Announces Broad single board computer Support for Intel® Pentium® M Processor
Ampro Announces Broad single board computer Support for Intel®
Pentium® M Processor
Platform Design Features Intel® Pentium® M Processors for Four Popular Form Factors
San Jose, CA – September 7, 2004. Ampro Computers, Inc., the inventor and leading supplier of PC/104, EBX and EPIC single board computers, today announced the first broad commitment to employ the new Intel® Pentium® M Processor Low Voltage (LV) 738, Low Voltage Intel Pentium M processor 1.10 GHz and Ultra Low Voltage (ULV) Intel® Celeron® M processor 600 MHz in the pervasive PC/104, EBX, EPIC, and ETX form factors. These processors have the lowest thermal design rating of the Intel Pentium and Celeron processors with embedded life cycle support. This makes them ideal for use in fanless and rugged embedded applications requiring extended operating temperatures. Ampro's platform design approach enables Ampro to feature the processors in four new products – LittleBoard™ 800, ReadyBoard™ 800, CoreModule™ 800, and Ampro ETX 800.
"Ampro carefully selects processors to achieve the greatest reliability and the easiest thermal management for our customers," said Joanne Mumola Williams, president and CEO of Ampro. "Embedded system manufacturers in military, medical, transportation, industrial, and commercial markets can now reach higher performance levels without sacrificing reliability by using CPU cooling fans."
"By incorporating the Intel® Pentium® M and Celeron® M processors in their designs, Ampro is able to meet the performance and power needs that their embedded customers demand," said Doug Davis, general manager of the Infrastructure Processor Division, Intel Corporation. "The use of Intel's latest low voltage processors allows Ampro to proliferate their small form factor single board computers into fanless applications across a variety of embedded market segments."
Ampro's platform design, known as Longhorn, is based on the Intel Pentium M processors and features a 400MHz front side bus, the Intel® 855GME chipset with integrated Intel® Extreme Graphics 2 technology, LVDS flat panel interface, USB 2.0 for high-speed peripheral connectivity, Gigabit Ethernet, and high performance DDR memory. A critical piece of the architecture is support for the hundreds of commercially-available PC/104 (ISA bus) modules, which Ampro solved by using a PCI-to-ISA bridge chip that supports the full ISA address space used by many commercial and custom PC/104 modules. PC/104 support is included on the LittleBoard 800 single board computer, and is provided by Ampro's optional MiniModule™ ISA product for ReadyBoard 800 and CoreModule 800. This approach allows the continued use of PC/104 (ISA) modules where needed, while saving money for applications not using the PC/104 bus.
Other embedded features include RS-422/485 serial ports, eight general-purpose I/Os (GPIOs), PC/104-Plus expansion for stackable low profile systems, 5-volt only power supply requirement, configurable interrupts, watchdog timer, thermal monitoring, low voltage detection, battery-free boot, and serial console.
To learn more about how Ampro's Longhorn platform and its processors, please visit: http://www.ampro.com/RP/LonghornFAQ.pdf.
For product photo, please use the following link:
http://www.ampro.com/html/RB800.gif.
http://www.ampro.com/html/LB800.gif.
Pricing and Availability
Ampro Products based on the Intel Pentium M processor start at under $600 in moderate volumes. The ReadyBoard 800 and MiniModule ISA will be available for evaluation and qualification in October. The LittleBoard 800 will be available in December. The CoreModule 800 and Ampro ETX 800 will be available in 2005.
About Ampro Computers, Inc.
Ampro Computers, Inc. is the leading global provider of modular embedded computing solutions for OEM applications. Ampro's mission is to provide time saving solutions for embedded systems designers that accelerate the product deployment process. Ampro pioneered the embedded PC industry creating the popular PC/104 and EBX standards, and recently co-invented the new EPIC standard. The EnCore and ETX families are rugged computers-on-modules products which enable designers to obtain all the benefits of an off-the-shelf CPU solution while maintaining the flexibility of a full custom design. In addition to EnCore and ETX, Ampro offers four product lines: PC/104-compatible CoreModule CPUs and MiniModule expansion products, EBX form factor LittleBoard single board computers, and EPIC form factor ReadyBoard single board computers. For more information about Ampro Computers, please visit http://www.ampro.com.
About the Intel® Communications Alliance
The Intel® Communications Alliance is a membership-based program composed of communications and embedded developers, as well as solution providers. They are committed to providing a strategic supply line of standards-based solutions to the communications and embedded market segments. Ampro is a General Member of the Intel® Communications Alliance. For details, see www.intel.com/go/ica.
AMPRO is a registered trademark and EnCore, CoreModule, MiniModule, ReadyBoard, LittleBoard and Little Board are trademarks of Ampro Computers, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Intel Pentium and Celeron are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel
Media Contacts:
Ampro Computers, Inc.
Victoria Kostka
Tel: 1-408-360-4324
Email: vkostka@ampro.com
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