We attended an “Internet of Things” meeting here this week, and Scott Garman introduced us to a new small form factor, the MinnowBoard. The MinnowBoard is very high performance single board computer (SBC) using a 1Ghz Intel Atom processor, but unlike most SBC’s it has the General Purpose I/O (GPIO) expansion connections needed to expand the system using low cost peripherals. More akin to SBC’s like the Raspberry Pi, it runs the Angstrom Linux Distribution and is compatible with the Yocto project. This looks to be a very nice high-end SBC for embedded work that requires the power of an Intel CPU
What is on a MinnowBoard?
- 4.2″ by 4.2″ Form Factor
- Intel Atom E640 (1GHz, 32bit)
- EG20T Intel Platform Controller Hub
- Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator GMA600
- 1 GB DDR2 RAM
- 4 MB SPI Flash
- (2) USB Host I/F
- (1) USB Device I/F
- Gigabit Ethernet
- SATA2 3Gb/sec
- PCI Express
- (1) SDIO
- (4) Switches
- (2) LEDs
- (8) GPIO
- (2) UART
- (1) I2C
- (1) SMB
- (1) SPI
- (1) CAN-Bus
- “Lure” Expansion Connector
- UEFI Boot Loader
The MinnowBoard uses a high-speed interface connector (as it handles PCI Express signals) for it’s expansion boards, which are known as Lures.
This is a very high performance interface, and I could see doing a lot with this kind of bandwidth. The MinnowBoard just calls out for a nice FPGA “Lure” expansion board, to offload those “hard-real-time” tasks.
For more detail: The Minnow Board – A New Small Form Factor
