ASRock has revealed that its 10th Gen Comet Lake based “IMB-1222” Mini-ITX board is being used by Dynamis PRC for a Linux-driven autonomous driving system participating in the 2022 Formula Student Championship.

ASRock Industrial has announced a design win with Dynamis PRC Team, the Formula SAE championship racing team from the Politecnico di Milano. ASRock is providing its IMB-1222 Mini-ITX board, built around Intel’s 10th Gen Comet Lake-S as the mainboard for a self-driving car system prototype that will compete in the 2022 Formula Student Championship.

The Dynamis PRC computer will run Ubuntu with ROS extensions and will also include Arm microcontrollers running FreeRTOS. In the same announcement, ASRock also promoted its recently announced, Comet Lake based iEPF-9000S/iEP-9000E Series computers for self-driving projects (see farther below).

Dynamis PRC’s Formula Student Championship racer (left) and ASRock’s IMB-1222
(click images to enlarge)

Hosted by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Formula Student Championship is “one of the world’s most competitive international automobile design competitions for students among university teams,” says ASRock. In previous Formula Student competitions, Milan, Italy based Dynamis PRC has achieved 4th place globally and ranked 1st nationally.

The IMB-1222 based autonomous driving system will process data from sensors and utilize machine learning to precisely determine the position of items within the vehicle’s surroundings, says ASRock. The system uses this data to “calculate the optimal trajectory.”

 
IMB-2022

The IMB-1222 board was announced a year ago along with several other Comet Lake-S products. The IMB-1222 is a thin Mini-ITX board, such as ASRock’s earlier, 8th Gen Whiskey Lake based IMB-1216 and later, 11th Gen Tiger Lake powered IMB-1224. Other Comet Lake based Mini-ITX SBCs include Portwell’s full-height WADE-8212.

IMB-1222 portside view
(click image to enlarge)

The model used by Dynamis PRC is likely the IMB-1222-WV, which adds a SIM card socket and an automotive friendly 12-28V input compared to 12V on the standard model. The IBM-1222 models support up to 80W Comet Lake-S processors and provide an Intel Q470E chipset. The 170 x 170mm board provides up to 64GB DDR4 and supports 0 to 60ºC temperatures.

The IMB-2022 features GbE and 2.5GbE ports along with 4x USB 3.2 Gen1, HDMI 2.0a, DP 1.2, and an audio I/O jack. Internal features include 6x USB 3.2 Gen1. 4x COM, 2x SATA III, GPIO, eDP 1.4, LVDS, TPM 2.0, and a watchdog.

For expansion, you get PCIe x16 Gen3 plus M.2 M-key, E-key, and B-key sockets. Presumably, one of these slots is equipped with a GPU board or an NPU module such as Intel’s Myriad X to enable AI acceleration

 
iEPF-9000S/ iEP-9000E Series

In the same announcement, ASRock promoted its Comet Lake based iEPF-9000S/ iEP-9000E Series Edge AIoT Platform as a good choice for driverless vehicles. Announced in late February, the systems support Win 10 and Ubuntu.

ASRock iEPF-9000S (left) and iEP-9000E
(click image to enlarge)

The iEPF-9000S is an expanded version of the iEP-9000E that adds a full-size PCIe x16 Gen3 slot and 4x instead of 2x SATA trays. The smaller iEP-9000E, however, has 5x rather than 3x GbE ports, and a whopping 128GB maximum DDR4 capacity compared to 64GB.

Both iEPF-9000S/ iEP-9000E Series computers provide dual 2x mini-PCIe, 3x M.2, and a SIM slot. Other common features include 4x USB 3.2 Gen2, 6x COM, 2x DP, and a VGA port. The rugged systems provide up to a -40 to 75°C range, depending on the CPU, plus shock and vibration resistance.

 
Further information

The IMB-1222 Mini-ITX board and iEPF-9000S/ iEP-9000E Series appear to be available at undisclosed pricing. More information may be found in ASRock’s Dynamis PRC collaboration announcement, as well as the IMB-1222 product page and 2021 ASRock catalog (PDF), which includes the IMB-1222, the iEPF-9000S/ iEP-9000E Series, and much more.