The compact dimensions and extremely low power consumption of the powerful Qseven™ module technology is possible thanks to new, highly integrated and low power processors such as the recently announced Intel® Atom™ processor Z5xx series. The Qseven™ standard defines a maximum power consumption of 12 watts. Therefore, the modules are especially suited for fanless systems. If required, a thermal cooling interface transfers any heat generated to a heat sink.

Part of the Qseven™ initiative is the utilization of connector technology from established MXM graphics modules, which are already used in large volumes in laptops. The established connector format is especially designed for high transmission speeds and is only assembled to the base board. The costs, compared to connector pairs, can therefore be further reduced and PCI Express assemblies can be fully automatically manufactured using latest technology.

The companies congatec AG, SECO, MSC Vertriebs GmbH and recently the Swedish company Hectronic, who support the Qseven™ form-factor, invite other embedded computer manufacturers to join the open Qseven™ consortium. Publication of a general specification and a design guideline are planned for the end of the second quarter of 2008.

"Qseven™ offers the best prerequisites for implementation of fanless, mobile and battery powered systems,” says Wolfgang Eisenbarth, Director of Marketing - Boards & Systems at MSC Vertriebs GmbH. “With strong support from the Qseven™ community we will open new, as yet undeveloped markets.”

To comply with the requirements of embedded applications, the Qseven™ form-factor defines an API software interface for the watchdog timer, I2C Bus, LCD backlight control, BIOS user memory area and the temperature control. For connection of external devices, a broad range of industry standard interfaces are available: 4x PCI Express, 2 x SATA, six USB 2.0 ports, a 1000Base-T Ethernet interface, 2x SDIO (8 Bit), a video input port (VIP), high definition audio (HDA), I2C Bus and LPC.
An onboard graphics controller with 2 x 24-bit LVDS, SDVO, DisplayPort™ and HDMI™ offers sophisticated graphics characteristics. Furthermore, the new VESA DisplayID™ standard to automatically detect the attached flat-panel display is supported.