Product of the Week: AAEON Technology de next-TGU8 Small Form Factor SBC

July 18, 2022

Sponsored Story

Higher performance in smaller form factors has been a hallmark of the electronics industry for the last 50 years. Only now it’s being realized in industrial PCs capable of locally executing AI alongside traditional deterministic and reliable control tasks.

Package that with the TDP and efficiency required by applications like drones, and what you have is a transformed intelligent edge.

At just 86 mm x 55 mm, the AAEON Technology de next-TGU8 single board computer smashes through board space limitations on the performance and efficiency of quad-core 11^th generation Intel® Core i3/i5/i7 (Tiger Lake-UP3) processors, which deliver a scalable TDP between 15W and 28W that result in an overall platform power consumption of 55W to 84W despite a PassMark CPU benchmark score as high as 11170.

In addition to the four CPU cores, Intel UHD Graphics helps the Tiger Lake-UP3 SoCs bring undeniable compute, graphics, and machine learning workload performance gains over the competition. Even so, the de next-TGU8 contains embedded features such as a 255-level watchdog timer, firmware TPM, and 16 GB of LPDDR4 memory with in-band ECC on board.

The AAEON de next-TGU8 in Action

In action, the de next-TGU8’s real-time characteristics show through two RS 232/422/285 ports and an SMBus/I2C interface for transmitting deterministic control signals, as well as two USB3.2 Gen2 Type A ports and four USB 2.0 ports. HDMI 1.4b and eDP interfaces provide the system’s dual simultaneously display connectivity.

From a networking perspective, the de next-TGU8 is plug-and-playable in Industrial IoT environments thanks to not one, but two onboard industrial-grade Intel® Ethernet controllers – the Intel® i219LM and Intel® i225LM. The i219LM manages and delivers 10/100/1000Base Ethernet over an RJ-45 interface while the i225LM supports 10/100/2500Base Ethernet connectivity via a second RJ-45.

Both controllers are compatible with the IEEE 1588 PTP protocol, making them deployment-ready for time-sensitive networking use cases. They also facilitate the platform’s wake-on-LAN for remote power-on.

Storage and expansion are possible via a SATA 3x1 interface, two M.2 2880 M key ports for additional wireless connectivity, and an FPC slot for add-on LAN, graphics capture, storage, etc.

The Aaeon SBC is capable of operating across temperature ranges of 0°C — 60°C and environmental humidity from 0% to 90%. On the EMC front, it’s CE and FCC Class A certified.

Getting Started with the AAEON de next-TGU8 SBC

Developers working with the de next-TGU8 single-board computer will be able to get the system up and running quickly and securely thanks to the packaged AMI UEFI BIOS.

On top of that foundation, they can take advantage of application development tools and frameworks like Intel® oneAPI and the OpenVINO machine learning toolkit. Designed to help software engineers build, optimize, and deploy software on different processor architectures, each toolkit contains libraries, compilers, and other tools to get intelligent applications into the field.

The AAEON de next-TGU8 SBC is in its preliminary production phases and quotes can be requested from the product page. There are also add-on accessories available for purchase that plug into the onboard interfaces mentioned earlier, such as:

• An FPC expansion card with a riser kit
• PER-T642 adaptor cards for M.2 B key 2242 AI acceleration and M.2 E key 2230 Wi-Fi modules
• PER-T643 adaptor cards for M.2 B key 2242 AI acceleration and M.2 B key 3052 4G modules
• PER-T641 adaptor cards for an 8-bit DIO port and two additional USB2.0 interfaces
• denext-FAN01 thermal management solution

For information on the compact IPC SBC, its companion accessories, and more, visit www.aaeon.com/en/p/embedded-single-board-computers-denext-tgu8 or check out the resources below.

• AAEON de next-TGU8 Product Page: www.aaeon.com/en/p/embedded-single-board-computers-denext-tgu8
• AAEON de next-TGU8 Data Sheet: https://data-us.aaeon.com/DOWNLOAD/2014%20datasheet/Boards/denext-TGU8%20Preliminary%20Datasheet_20220701.pdf
• 11^th generation Intel® Core™ Processor Overview: www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/processors/core/11th-gen-processors.html
• 11^th generation Intel® Core™ Processor PassMark Results: www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-1185G7E+%40+2.80GHz&id=4298
• AAEON eShop: https://eshop.aaeon.com