Sam440ep Flex

Manufacturer: 
ACube Systems Srl
Availability: 
Older models
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Specifications: 
  • FlexATX Form Factor (21,6x17 cm)
  • CPU Applied Micro PowerPC 440ep (667 and 733 Mhz)
    • Integrated DDR 266 memory controller
    • Integrated PCI controller
    • Integrated Flash memory devices controller
    • Integrated USB 1.1 Host and 2.0 Device controller
    • 2 integrated Ethernet 10/100 ports
    • Up to 4 serial ports
    • 2 I2C interfaces
    • SPI interfaces
    • 64 pin for I/O General Purpose
  • 2 DDR DIMM slots, max 1 GB RAM
  • USB 2.0 OHCI/EHCI NEC PCI controller (2 external ports, 2 internal ports)
  • Audio Cirrus Logic CS4281 and Realtek ALC655 Codec
  • Silicon Image 4 Serial ATA ports
  • Pericom 8150B PCI Bridge
  • FPGA Lattice XP with 80 pin I/O expansion connector
  • 1 PCI Slot - 32 bits, 66 Mhz
  • 2 PCI Slots -32 Bit, 33 Mhz
  • mini PCI Slot - 32 bits, 33 Mhz (optional)
  • RTC with backup battery
  • ZigBee module (optional)
  • UBoot 1.3.1 

Sam440ep-Flex is a PowerPC modular motherboard engineered and produced by ACube Systems and it is totally made in Italy.

The main features of this board are:

  • low power consumption
  • passive cooling
  • scalability

The core of the board is the PowerPC 440EP, a System On Chip (SoC) produced by Applied Micro under license from IBM.

One of the main features of the Applied Micro PowerPC 440EP is the presence, together with the CPU, of a number of integrated peripherals. This allowed us to build a complete system with a huge savings of both development and debug time, with less components and space used on the PCB. This also results in a significant cost reduction for the customer.

As a consequence the northbridge/southbridge combination is not present on the board. Part of their functionalities are built into the CPU.

For the specific model of CPU mounted on the Sam board, the 440EP, we have the following integrated peripherals:

  • DDR memory controller
  • PCI controller
  • USB 1.1 host and USB 2.0 device controller
  • 2 Ethernet 10/100 ports
  • Up to 4 serial ports
  • 2 I2C interfaces
  • SPI interface
  • 64 pins for General Purpose I/O

The 440EP chip has a size of 35x35 mm, with a PBGA packaging (456 balls). It is built with CMOS (0.13 um) technology, has a very low power consumption (only 3 Watts at 533Mhz) and it does not require any active cooling system.