Kishan Jainandunsing
(April 2006)

ESC West, April 2006, San Francisco – Kontron showed a proptotype of its VIA Technologies-based Basic form factor COM Express module at the show. The module on display and shown here below, was definitly a prototype, as it has the SO-DIMM connector in a 90 degrees rotated position. The company expects to start shipping its ETXepress-CN7 modules in Q4 of this year. With the ETXExpress-CN7 Kontron is the first COM Express manufacturer with an alternative to COM Express modules with Intel's CPUs and chipsets.

The Kontron ETXexpress-CN7 uses the VIA CN700 plus VIA VT8251 chipset and VIA C7 processors, which are available in speeds from 1.5 GHz to 2 GHz, with maximum power dissipation of 20 watts and a FSB of 400 MHz. The modules support up to 1 GB of fast DDR2-SDRAM system memory either via a SO-DIMM expansion socket or directly on board. Alternatively, customers will be able to specify VIA Eden 7 Low Power processors, which are available in speeds from 400 MHz to 1.5 GHz. The ETXexpress-CN7 comes with 2 dedicated PCI-Express x1 lanes, PCI bus, LPC bus, 8x USB 2.0 ports, 4x Serial-ATA ports, AC '97 link and 1Gb Ethernet.