Advantech, a leading provider of industrial motherboards, is proud to release its AIMB-U233 palm-sized motherboard aimed at smart applications. As the first Core i platform in Advantech’s UTX motherboard family, AIMB-U233 inherits the highly functional small form factor design powered by powerful 8th generation Intel® Core™ processors (i3-8145UE / i5-8365UE / i7-8665UE). This motherboard combines high computing performance with diverse I/O ports and M.2 expansion slots, yielding an ideal solution for sophisticated digitalized applications, specifically those that require a small footprint, e.g. kiosk integration, medical and factory automation applications.
Palm-Sized Solution for Machine Vision and Deep Learning
The industrial automation market is trending towards computing systems with a small form factor. Smart factory applications require from one side enhanced computing power integrated peripheral devices to enable machine vision and deep learning and from the other side have limited installation spaces. The Advantech AIMB-U233 motherboard is designed to meet the needs of smart factories. Despite its compact size (112 x 137 mm), AIMB-U233 offers 4x COM, 4x USB, 2x HDMI, 2x GbE LAN, 16-bit GPIO and 3x M.2 expansion slots. Meanwhile, the Intel® Core™ i7-8665UE processor guarantees smooth performance for complex computing tasks.
M.2 Expansion Slots for Increased Functionality and Flexible Configuration
The AIMB-U233 motherboard is equipped with M.2 M-key, M.2 E-key, and M.2 B-key compatibility to support diverse applications and drastically boost computing performance. Combining the M.2 M-key interface with 4-lane NVMe PCIe can increase storage read/write speeds up to 400% compared to a traditional SATA 3.0 SSD. Moreover, this functionality is expanded, allowing the system to automatically switch into SATA mode when a cost-effective SATA SSD is installed.
To meet the increasing demands of wireless connectivity, the AIMB-U233‘s M.2 E-key and M.2 B-key connectors can be used to integrate Wi-Fi/BT and 4G LTE modules and support a wide range of wireless applications. Both expansion slots can also be used for storage via a 2-lane PCIE SSD (M.2 E-key) and/or SATA SSD (M.2 B-key). For machine vision applications in automated factories, the M.2 E-key connector supports the use of Advantech Movidius™ modules for AI computing.