DIGITAL-LOGIC Offers First PC/104-CPU Board with PCI/104-Express Extension Bus

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Luterbach, Switzerland -- November 20, 2006 -- With its new MSM945CX, DIGITAL-LOGIC now offers the probably most powerful CPU system in PC/104 standard format. The new board is based on the COMexpress module SMX945-L2400 with Intel's latest Core™ Duo Processor L2400, a memory capacity of up to 2GB, two clock rates of 1.6GHz and the i945 chipset. The MSM945CX's expandability via PCI and PCI Express signals is a worldwide innovation. This innovation was realized by extending the PC/104-Plus specifications with a PCI Express bus replacing the obsolete ISA bus, so the board is now called “PCI/104-Express.” PCI/104-Express represents a forward-looking standard which will make it possible, even within the next 10 to 20 years, to develop computer boards on the PC/104 form factor and to employ the new serial bus standards. For this purpose, the embedded computing companies RTD Embedded Technologies, Inc. (USA), LIPPERT (Germany) and DIGITAL-LOGIC (Switzerland) conjointly defined PCI/104-Express. Its specifications will be recommended to the PC/104 consortium for adaptation. In the meantime, DIGITAL-LOGIC will test the new standard with first products.

“DIGITAL-LOGIC's MSM945CX-L2400 is a highly integrated PC module based on the Intel® Core™ Duo Processor and PCI Express,” said Rose Schooler, Director of Division Marketing, Processor Infrastructure at Intel®. “Embedded computing companies like DIGITAL-LOGIC, which offers innovative solutions based on Intel® processors, enable OEMs to accelerate their products' time-to-market and to reduce development costs.”

“We are very proud to be a General-Member of the Intel® -Communications-Alliance and to be in a strong position to better supply our customers with Intel® based solutions,” says Felix Kunz, Chief Executive Officer of DIGITAL-LOGIC. „Having early access to Intel's leading technology and the support provided by Intel, we are able to further accelerate customer specific development projects.”

The new PC/104 CPU board features a vast variety of interfaces with eight USB V2.0, two PS2, two COM, one LPT and one LAN port. In addition, it has one Video/SDVO and one AC97/HDA-compatible 7.1-sound interface, one 32-bit PCI port and twelve PCI Express lanes. For the connection of mass storages, one floppy disk, one P-ATA and two S-ATA150 interfaces are available. For displays, the MSM945CX board uses the graphic controller of the i945GM chipset with up to 256MB video memory. The video controller uses two 18-bit LCD interfaces to control all common LCD technologies. It supports resolutions with up to 1600x1200 pixels.

The MSM945CX can either be run fan-less with passive cooling or with active cooling-fan. It requires a supply voltage of 5V and runs on all common operating systems like Windows® XP, QNX®, Linux etc. Equipped with a Flash BIOS, the CPU board allows to boot the operating system from different media such as hard disk, floppy disk, USB, or LAN. The module works within the standard temperature range of -20°C to +60°C and can be run at a lower clock rate within the extended temperature range of -40°C to +70°C. The smartModule's sophisticated cooling system allows an optimal thermal connection to a cooling unit. The MSM945CX was designed for low current consumption and thanks to its high video performance, it represents the ideal solution for applications in the field of video processing, video streaming, biometric data processing, home automation, and entertainment, as well as remote management of IT applications.

About PCI/104-Express

The PCI/104-Express bus is an auto-configuring bus which does not require a jumper to be set. There are four 1-lane and two 4-lane PCI Express connections or one 8-lane PCI Express connection available. In addition to the PCI Express signals, two USB and two SATA signals are at hand. Power management is provided by ATX signals, wake events and controller functions. The PCI/104-Express bus may be expanded upstack and downstack. Furthermore a CPU_Direction line controls the multiplexer on the respective peripheral module.

The missing ISA signals can be retrieved anytime from the parallel 32-bit PCI bus via a PC/104 plus bridging board (DIGITAL-LOGIC's MSMIP104). The MSMPI104 offers 8-bit and full 16-bit ISA support. To fully connect the ISA bridge to the PCI bus, the PC/104-Plus connection plug arrangement was enhanced with three additional signals. Instead of the never-used 64-bit enable line, SDMA-REQ, SDMA-GNT and SIRQ are included now. They are employed by the PCI-to-ISA bridge to offer a comprehensive ISA-bus support. Therefore, the PCI/104-Express standard is backward compatible.

About DIGITAL-LOGIC

Luterbach/Switzerland-based DIGITAL-LOGIC, one of the world's leading companies in the embedded computer market, was established in 1992 and is involved in the development, manufacture and international marketing of highly-integrated embedded PC's. The group has subsidiaries in Germany and France, and currently employs around 100 specialist staff world-wide. DIGITAL-LOGIC has received many awards and knows how to be at the cutting edge of technology with innovative, reliable products and realises economical PC solutions for demanding applications. The ISO9001 certified company develops miniature computer systems based on the Intel architecture with x86 and Pentium processor performance. The product range comprises the standard products with embedded computer modules (smartModules) and boards (PC/104, PC/104-Plus, EBX, Slot-PC), as well as customized embedded computers and computer systems. For more information visit www.digitallogic.ch