For people who own conventional desktop computers having CPU chips sitting on motherboards, the the sight a rackmount computer must be odd. Here’s a “card cage” that holds a passive backplane with lots of slots and little familiar circuity. Where’s the processor, memory and I/O ports? Why they’re all sitting on a board that plugs into one of those slots, called (appropriately enough) a single board computer (SBC) or “blade” (if the board is particularly self-contained). Sometimes, to provide true fault tolerance, passive backplanes can be segmented and each segment in the backplane is independently powered, so it allows several independent SBCs to operate simultaneously.

MEN Micro Inc., a renowned provider of embedded computing and I/O solutions for demanding industrial, mobile and harsh environment applications, now offers a 6U (10.5-inch) high SBC in a CompactPCI form factor that combines Intel’s (News - Alert) multicore technology with a flexible mezzanine card extension (boards that piggyback onto the SBC) and rugged design to provide exceptional performance, even in industrial applications.

The new, scalable D9 can be equipped with the Intel CoreT2 Duo, CoreT Duo or Celeron M processors to support a multitude of dual-core and single-core CPUs depending on specific application requirements.

By incorporating the Intel Mobile 945GME Express Chipset with an integrated 256-bit graphics engine providing up to 250 MHz, the D9 combines outstanding computing and graphics performance with low power consumption. The 945GME supports the connection of two monitors with either the same or different displays. Provisions for a VGA connector or up to two digital video portals are provided via a mezzanine card.

The SBC is equipped with a tailored heat sink and up to 4 GB of soldered DDR2 RAM for optimum shock and vibration resistance. This makes the board suitable for a wide range of applications including monitoring, visualization, control and test and measurement throughout the industrial automation, multimedia, traffic and transport, aerospace, shipbuilding, medical engineering and robotics markets.

The D9 offers an extensive combination of I/O functions with rear I/O, mezzanine extension cards as well as XMC or PMC. A total of six USB 2.0 interfaces, up to four UARTs and up to four Gigabit Ethernet ports are available at the front or at the rear of the D9. In addition, PICMG (News - Alert) 2.16 can be accessed via a mezzanine card. The D9 also offers a CompactFlash slot and two SATA ports that can be used onboard or on the backplane. An XMC/ PMC slot offers even more modularity. The XMC is controlled via two PCI Express links with one lane each and the PMC offers 32/64 bit and 33/66/133 MHz up to PCI-X.

Depending on the sizes of the system and heat sink as well as the processor type, the D9 can also be used in an extended temperature range of 0°C to +45°C (+32°F to 113°F). Optional conformal coating enables operation in humid and dusty environments.

The board operates in Windows and Linux environments as well as with real-time operating systems that support a multicore architecture. The Award BIOS has been specially developed for embedded system applications. Management and supervision of the board functions complete the functionality of the D9. The D9 has a guaranteed minimum availability of five years, extending the board’s standard availability into 2013.

Pricing for the D9 with T7400 starts at $3,032. Delivery is two weeks ARO.

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Richard Grigonis is an internationally-known technology editor and writer. Prior to joining TMC (News - Alert) as Executive Editor of its IP Communications Group, he was the Editor-in-Chief of VON Magazine (News - Alert) from its founding in 2003 to August 2006. He also served as the Chief Technical Editor of CMP Media’s Computer Telephony magazine, later called Communications Convergence (News - Alert), from its first year of operation in 1994 until 2003. In addition, he has written five books on computers and telecom (including the Computer Telephony Encyclopedia and Dictionary of IP Communications). To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.