Aaeon introduces PICO-ITX board with enhanced industrial features
Designed to operated in harsh environments, the PICO-ADN4 single board computer (SBC) is the latest addition to Aaeon’s line of PICO-ITX boards.
It has CPUs from the latest Intel Core i3 processor N-series, Intel Atom x7000E series and Intel processor N-series (formerly Alder Lake-N). It is intended for the needs of industry 4.0 deployments, such as industrial automation and assembly line quality control.
The PICO-ADN4 is available with both standard (0 to 60 degrees C) and wide-temperature (-40 to 85 degrees C) ranges, which, paired with a fanless design, make it suitable for factory deployment, advised Aaeon. The board supports 12V DC input and has a range of optional accessories including a DC/DC converter that enables 9.0 to 36V power input. These make it suitable for environments with unstable power sources, said Aaeon.
Aaeon has used LPDDR5 instead of LPDDR4x for the PICO-ADN4 to raise data transmission speeds where low latency is required. The board’s system memory is also soldered, which is beneficial for vibration-prone applications.
Aaeon has also equipped the board with a more advanced Ethernet interface than earlier generations, using one of its two RJ-45 ports supporting Intel I226V for 2.5GbE. The second RJ-45 retains Realtek RTL8111H-CG support for Gbit Ethernet networking. Other physical interfaces include two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, alongside an HDMI 1.4 port.
For internal connectors, there are two serial COM connectors for RS-232 / 422 / 485, 4-bit general purpose I/O, and SMBus (co-lay I2C). The display output includes HDMI, and there is also an LVDS connector available, co-laid with eDP for human-machine interface (HMI) displays.
The PICO-ADN4 supports Wi-Fi via an M.2 2230 E-Key, and there is additional storage via a full-size mSATA slot, which can also accommodate an mPCIe module via the board’s BIOS settings. A BIO allows users to obtain functions such as DDI, LPC, PCIe, or SMBus, although this does require a customised BIOS.
The Intel Core i3 Processor N-series, Intel Atom x7000E Series, Intel Processor N-series platform offers an upgrade to graphic capability, with Intel UHD graphics for 12th Gen Intel Processors providing a higher graphics render clock frequency, as well as the CPUs themselves capable of higher single-core frequencies when compared to the previous generation.
The PICO-ADN4 is now in mass production.
