congatec releases seven modules based on Intel Core IOTG mobile processors
The COM-HPC and COM Express computer on module portfolio from congatec now includes seven new models based on the 12th Gen Intel Core processor. The Intel Core IOTG mobile processors (formerly codenamed Alder Lake) feature the new Intel hybrid architecture with its mix of performance cores (P-cores) and efficient cores (E‑cores). The BGA-solderable processors consume 15 to 28W base power, which enables engineers to use them in passively cooled embedded and edge computing platforms. This eliminates the need for cooling options and improves the ruggedness and mean time between failure (MTBF) of system designs, explained congatec.
The lower energy consumption is a result of reducing the number of P-cores while maintaining the E-core count. For example, in the Intel Core i7 processor performance range heterogenous workloads benefit from eight efficient cores in all available variants and can scale down from six P-cores (12800HE / 45W base power) to either four (1270PE / 28W base power) or two P-cores (1265UE / 15W base power). The number of PCIe lanes has also been reduced from 28 to 20, which also contributes to power saving. The selected processors are also suitable for hard real-time applications, and support virtual machines. They include Intel TCC (Time Co-ordinated Computing) and TSN (time sensitive networking) support, to handle different heterogenous workloads including AI and / or immersive GUIs (graphic user interfaces) on a single passively cooled edge computing platform.
Target industrial markets for the Computer-on-Modules with Intel Core i7 / 5 / 3 and Celeron processors are edge computers and IoT gateways which incorporate multiple virtual machines for smart factories and process automation, AI-based quality inspection and industrial vision, real-time collaborative robotics, and autonomous logistics vehicles for warehousing and shipping. Typical outdoor applications include autonomous vehicles and mobile machines, video security and gateway applications in transportation and smart cities, as well as 5G cloudlets and edge devices requiring AI supported packet inspection.
congatec offers different core combinations of DDR5 memory support, and PCIe Gen 4 supporting Intel hybrid architecture accelerate multi-threaded applications. The graphics performance is served by the integrated Intel Iris Xe GPU with up to 96 execution units.
The COM‑HPC Client and COM Express Type 6 modules have dedicated AI engines supporting Windows ML, Intel OpenVINO toolkit and Chrome Cross ML. The different AI workloads can be seamlessly delegated to the P-cores, E-cores and the GPU execution units to process even the most compute-intensive edge AI tasks, said congatec. The built-in Intel Deep Learning boost technology leverages different cores via Vector Neural Network Instructions (VNNI), and the integrated graphics supports AI accelerated DP4a GPU instructions that can even be scaled to dedicated GPUs Intel’s lowest power built-in AI accelerator, the Intel Gaussian and Neural Accelerator 3.0 (Intel GNA 3.0), enables dynamic noise suppression and speech recognition and can even run while the processor is in low power states for wake-up voice commands.
There is support for Real-Time Systems’ hypervisor technology as well as OS support for Real-Time Linux and Wind River VxWorks.