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SMARC is a compact system-on-module (SOM) format that’s popular in embedded applications. On that front, congatec unveiled the conga-STDA4, one of its latest SMARC SOMs (see figure). The module is built around Texas Instruments’ TDA4VM Jancito processor with dual 2-GHz Arm Cortex-A72 cores and six 1-GHz Cortex-R4F cores to handle real-time chores. The matrix multiply accelerator (MMA) delivers 8 TOPS of performance that can be used for applications including deep-learning support.
The SOM targets industrial as well as harsh environments with an operating temperature range of −40 to 85°C. It sports up to 8 GB of LPDDR4 memory with error-correction-code (ECC) support and a 128-GB eMMC 5.1 flash memory. The chip provides dual 1-Gb Ethernet with IEEE 1588 support. There’s a dual-role USB 2.0 port, two USB 2.0 ports, and two USB 3.0 ports.
Multiple PCI Express (PCIe) channels can be configured with up to a x4 PCIe interface. In addition, the system has four serial ports, two SPI ports, and two CAN FD ports. An optional u-blox Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module can be included.
The graphics system is built around a 3D GPU PowerVRRogue 8XE GE8430. It’s able to handle up to four full HD displays at 60 frames/s. The video processing unit (VPU) features 4k60p H.264 encode and Full-HD H.265 decode.
Video output can drive a dual-channel 24-bit LVDS interface or DisplayPort 1.4 that supports up to three Full-HD 1080p displays. There are MIPI-DSI 4-lanes shared with LVDS and two MIPI-CSI 4-lanes. Two integrated image signal processor (ISP) units handle the MIPI-CSI camera inputs.
The systems can run operating systems like Linux as well as real-time operating systems (RTOS) such as Wind River’s VxWorks and QNX.
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