Portwell’s “PCOM-B701” is a COM Express Type 7 with an up to 16-core Atom C3000 plus 4x 10GbE-KR, a GbE port, 20x PCIe lanes, and industrial temp support.

Like the PCOM-B700G module that Portwell unveiled last month, the PCOM-B701 adopts the 125 x 95mm COM Express 3.0 Type 7 Basic form factor. Instead of supporting Intel’s 5th Gen Xeon or Pentium CPUs, however, it uses Intel’s new, up to 16-core Atom C3000 server-class chip, which we first saw in June on DFI’s similarly Type 7 DV970.

PCOM-B701
(click image to enlarge)

Unlike the PCOM-B700G and DV970, both of which support Linux and Windows, no OS support is listed. The module is designed for applications including micro servers and industrial, military/aerospace, energy, robotics, and IoT systems.

The 14nm fabricated Atom C3000 is notable for being available with up to 16 cores clocked at up to 2.2GHz. The SoC also supports 4x 10GbE controllers, which makes it a good fit for COM Express Basic Type 7, the first COM Express spec to support 10GbE.

The Atom C3000 can drive PCIe 3.0 x16, 16x SATA 3.0, and 4x USB 3.0 interfaces, as well as Intel’s VT-d hardware virtualization and Quick Assist compression and encryption technology. It lacks graphics support, which in any case isn’t supported by the Type 7 spec.

While the PCOM-B700G was a fairly well-rounded SoC, with the range of interfaces you’d expect to see on a typical COM Express, but without the graphics, the PCOM-B701 focuses most of its energies on networking and PCIe expansion. It provides 4x 10GbE-KR controllers, as well as a single 1GbE controller, compared to 4x 10GbE and 2x GbE ports on the DV970. The module is equipped with 12x PCIe x1 Gen 2 and a PCIe x8 Gen 3 interface for 20x lanes overall. (The announcement claims support for 32x PCIe lanes, but we don’t see where the other 12x lanes are hiding.)

You can load up to 48GB DDR4 (1866/2133/2400MHz), including ECC RAM, via three SODIMM slots, compared to a maximum of 32GB on the DV970. The announcement, but not the product page, mentions an option for eMMC 5.0 storage.

The PCOM-B701 supports 2x SATA III and 4x USB 3.0 ports, and that’s it. You won’t find any of the serial, DIO, and other I/O found on the DV970. The board is available with optional -40 to 85°C support.

PCOM-C700
(click image to enlarge)

Like Portwell’s PCOM-B700G, the PCOM-B701 can be purchased with a Type 7 carrier board called the PCOM-C700. The 305 x 244mm, ATX board offers 4x 10GbE ports, plus “fiber phys, NC-SI interface.” Other features include USB 3.0, SATA, GPIO, and up to 32x PCIe lanes.

 
Further information

The PCOM-B701 is available now at an undisclosed price. More information may be found on Portwell’s PCOM-B701 product page.