“Building a 10GbE infrastructure with IIoT, edge, fog, or Industry 4.0 servers and 5G small cells for real-time decentralized decision-making is just the first step,” explains Martin Danzer, Director of Product Management at congatec. “Once this infrastructure is in place, the performance of these nodes will increase to 10GbE node technologies, and the demand for transcoding, security, data capture, and analytics capabilities will grow as real-time communication continues to expand dramatically.”.
The congatec Micro Server Motherboard in Detail:
The Edge server board in the Mini-STX 5x5 form factor delivers high performance thanks to the conga-B7AC COM Express Type 7 module based on the Intel® Atom® C3000 processor. With a processor power consumption starting at just 11W TDP, the system offers 4x real-time 10GbE network throughput and up to 16 cores, ideal for processing many smaller data packets in parallel. Compared to other multi-core solutions, such as Intel® Xeon® D processors, costs and power consumption are significantly lower, enabling the deployment of very high network bandwidth and storage capacity in industrial applications.
Intel® Atom® server processor versions: from the 16-core Intel® Atom® C3958 processor to the quad-core C3508 processor, for an extended temperature range (-40°C to +85°C). Offering up to 48GB of fast 2400MHz DDR4 memory, which can be configured with or without error-correcting code (ECC), depending on customer requirements. 10GbE interfaces are implemented as standard via SFP+ cages, enabling network connectivity over fiber optic and copper cables. Additionally, the motherboard provides two 1GbE and two USB 3.0 interfaces for service and peripherals. One of the 1GbE ports is connected to the integrated board management controller and can be used for typical server remote management tasks.
The congatec micro server motherboard, in the Mini-STX 5x5 form factor, also offers a VGA output and a serial interface for local management. For custom expansion, it provides three M.2 slots. Two of these are designed for M.2 2280 cards with an M key and either 4 PCIe lanes or 1x SATA, making them particularly suitable for storage systems. The third M.2 slot accepts M.2 3042 cards with an A key. With 2x PCIe, 1x USB 3.0, and I²C, you can connect both storage systems and other peripherals. Additional interfaces include GPIO, I²C, SM, and LPC injectors.
If the Server-On-Module (SoM) requires active cooling, for example, with a 16-core Intel® Xeon® D processor, the optional CPU and system fans can also be supported and controlled. This means that the congatec micro server support board in the 5x5 Mini-STX form factor offers the same server-class performance that, until now, was only available in 19" rackmount servers. Today, these servers can be deployed anywhere in the world, and even in autonomous vehicles. Customization of this hardware platform is possible to meet the specific requirements of each application.
