Diamond Systems SATURN : SAT-E3940-4GD PCIe/104 SBC with Intel Atom x5-E3940, 4 GB RAM and Digital I/O

Rugged control systems need a current processor, PCIe expansion and dependable digital I/O, often without any analogue measurement at all. The SAT-E3940-4GD is the 4 GB digital I/O build in the Diamond Systems SATURN series: a PCIe/104 SBC with a quad-core Atom, soldered memory and a conduction-cooled design for fanless operation.

The Intel Atom x5-E3940 is a quad-core Apollo Lake processor at 1.6 GHz, bursting to 1.8 GHz, with 4 GB of non-ECC RAM soldered down, which avoids the problems SO-DIMM modules can cause under vibration. Graphics drive two HDMI ports and dual-channel 24-bit LVDS with backlight power, and a TPM 2.0 chip is on board.

System I/O covers two Gigabit Ethernet ports on Intel I210 controllers, two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports, two RS-232/422/485 ports and one RS-232 port, HDA audio on an ALC662 codec and a 7-pin SATA connector, with an M.2 2242 SATA socket for up to 1 TB. Digital I/O handles status inputs and switching, and further I/O modules can be added on PCIe/104 or the MiniCard socket. The SAT-E3940-4GA adds 16-bit analogue inputs and outputs to the same board, and the SAT-E3940-8GD has 8 GB of ECC RAM.

Power is 5 V DC. The SAT-E3940-4GD runs fanless from -40 to 85 °C, cooled by a bottom heat spreader with an integrated thermal pad that also serves as the mounting surface, with latching connectors throughout. Expansion is through a top-side PCIe/104 OneBank socket with four PCIe x1 lanes and two USB 2.0, and a full-size PCIe MiniCard socket. The board supports Windows 10 64-bit and Ubuntu Linux 64-bit.