Flex-ATX motherboard KTA75/Flex with AMD R-Series APU

The Kontron embedded Flex-ATX motherboard KTA75/Flex, based on the AMD Embedded R-Series accelerated processing unit (APU) and the AMD A75 controller hub, is designed for graphics-intensive and highly parallel embedded computing applications. It provides good stability and reliability due to its sophisticated board layout with long-term stable solid capacitors and a high-quality selection of components.

With its integrated discrete-class AMD Radeon HD 7000 series graphics, it delivers 3D/HD graphics and accelerated processing capabilities together with the ability to drive up to four displays simultaneously, either as independent displays, or as a single large surface. This makes the unit suitable for applications requiring high graphics and/or parallel computing performance in markets such as industrial automation, medical, and POS/POI, digital signage as well as gaming.

Developers can furthermore use the up to 563 GFLOPs provided by the integrated GPU to accelerate both graphics- and compute-intensive applications while using industry-standard libraries such as OpenCL, DirectX 11 and DirectCompute, which help to minimise development times and simplify design-in processes. Even despite its high graphics and computing performance, the APU’s thermal design power is moderate, ranging from 17 to only 35 W for the top-line AMD R-464L APU. But this value is hardly to be reached, as even the 35 W version draws only 13 W when running the 3DMark06, for example, which makes the motherboard an energy-efficient solution.

The embedded motherboard provides OEMs and developers with everything they need for their individual applications directly off the shelf. It not only supports a massive amount of serial I/Os such as USB 3.0 and PCIe, but also remains backwards compatible by providing standard PCI interfaces as well RS232 pin rows. Additional flexibility is provided by the embedded feature connector, which features 160 GPIOs, eliminating the need for individual I/O boards and thus reducing the bill of material and development time. 

For enhanced security, the motherboard integrates a secure asset management unit (SAMU) and a trusted platform module (TPM) 1.2, allowing for hardware-assisted encryption/decryption of content, enabling less CPU overhead and lower power when dealing with protected content. 

The features include: a maximum of 32 GB RAM; available with dual-core and quad-core AMD embedded R-Series APUs up to the R464L (2.3 GHz, 3.2 GHz in turbo mode) delivering an optimised balance between performance and power consumption; connections for video include 2x DisplayPort (DP) and 1x VGA; additional displays can be connected either via DP daisy chain or with an optional DP add-on card; 1x Gen 2.0 PCI Express x16 PEG port and 1x Gen 2.0 PCI Express x4 slot, 4x USB 3.0, 10x USB 2.0, and 2x GbE-LAN allowing for extensive peripheral and networking options; and a wide range of storage media can be connected via the five SATA600 interfaces with RAID 0/1 functionality and one mSATA (mini-SATA) socket for onboard SSD.

Operating system support is provided for Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows Embedded Standard 7, VxWorks, as well as Linux (Red Hat Enterprise, Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise, Red Flag Linux and Wind River Linux, among others).