FORTEC Integrated Puts Intel's Atom x7211RE to Work in Industrial Automation, Edge AI
New compact board boasts a wide operating temperature range and the promise of long-term availability.
Embedded electronics specialist FORTEC Integrated has announced the launch of a 3.5" almost-single-board computer it says can stand up to the demands of industrial use cases — powered by the Intel Atom x7211RE.
"In the embedded industry, the lifecycle of many platforms is very short — new generations arrive quickly, and older ones often disappear just as fast," claims FORTEC Integrated's Stefan Zieboll in support of his company's latest launch. "The SBCPRO-X51 is deliberately designed differently: it is not a short-term trend product, but a robust base for industrial applications that need to run stably for many years. It is a reliable platform for developers, purchasers, and product managers who require planning certainty and depend on trustworthy hardware."
The heart of the compact board — which, requiring the addition of a SODIMM for RAM, isn't quite a true single-board computer — is the Intel Atom x7211RE, launched last year as a low-power option for embedded and industrial computing. The chip includes two cores running at up to 3.2GHz, 6MB of cache, and support for running INT8-precision machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML and AI) workloads on-CPU via the OpenVINO framework — in an impressively low 6W power envelope. The chip also includes an Intel UHD Graphics GPU with 16 execution units running at up to 1GHz, which likewise can run INT8 workloads.
The SBCPRO-X51 supports up to 16GB of DDR5 memory, half the limit of the underlying Intel Atom chip, and includes DisplayPort (DP), a modular DisplayPort over USB Type-C connection with Power Delivery (PD) support, and an optional V-by-One display output, USB Type-C and USB Type-A ports mixed between USB 3.2 Gen. 1 and USB 2.0, analog audio, RS232/422/485 serial ports, and general-purpose input/output (GPIO) capabilities including an I2C bus. There are two 2.5-gigabit-Ethernet ports plus optional Wi-Fi, and three M.2 slots for expansion — though one of these is taken up by a V-by-One daughterboard if you choose that option, another by the multi-functional USB Type-C M.2 module, and the third if you add the optional Wi-Fi module.
The board includes a Trusted Platform Module 2.0 (TPM 2.0) compatible with Windows 11, with FORTEC Integrated promising full support for Microsoft's Windows 11 IoT LTSC alongside "various Linux variants." For industrial users, the entire assembly comes with an extended temperature rating of -20–80°C (-4–176°F) — and the company says it plans to keep both the board itself and a ready-to-run "box PC" variant in production for an extended period.
More information is available on the FORTEC Integrated website; the company has not publicly disclosed pricing.