MT02 - Low Power Linux Computer
Status: Development Units Availiable
Minerva Technology Inc. is pleased to offer the MT02 Low Power Computer for scientific and industrial applications. This product is designed to provide robust Internet connectivity and on-site computational power for data acquisition and processing. The MT02 provides a full GNU/Linux operating system based on the ARM Debian distribution. An independent system supervisor and watchdog is provided with a standard Linux system interface.
MT02 Final Version Features
The MT02 is designed with a 2 board topology. One standard CPU board provides the PXA255 with 128 or 256MB of 100MHz SDRAM, 32MB of flash memory, and a supervisor IC for hardware monitoring. The second board can be tailored to an application to provide a custom feature set. Available features include 10Base-T ethernet, 10/100Base-T ethernet, a smart 48 hour battery-backed UPS, a maximum of 2 PCMCIA/CompactFlash slots, and additional serial ports (RS232 or RS422). The 2 board system allows a custom solution to be designed at a significantly reduced cost and development cycle.
Supervisor Features
The supervisor IC provides independent hardware monitoring for the MT02. It monitors input voltage, battery state and all internal voltage levels. It communicates this information with Linux for monitoring by user applications. If the UPS is installed, the supervisor allows a graceful shutdown when the battery is near empty. The supervisor also allows dynamic core voltage changes while the system is running, to match the PXA255's dynamic core speed changes for power saving.
Power Consumption
Tests on the prototype version have shown the MT02 to draw less than 300mW at low speed (100MHz core, 50MHz SDRAM) with ethernet disabled. Running at full speed (400MHz core, 100MHz SDRAM) with ethernet enabled and active, the MT02 consumes just under one watt of power. The 10BaseT ethernet contributes roughly 200mW to that total. The final version will use lower power SDRAM and flash memory to reduce the power usage, especially when idle. Active load power will be further reduced by the use of low-voltage signalling.
Prototype Press Release, August 2003: MT02-PR0803-1.0.0.pdf