World's First Crusoe Single Board Computer

That was the case at least, until early this year. A Taiwanese company called IBASE Technology have recently announced the IB750, a 5.25-inch SBC (single board computer) based around Transmeta's TM3400 Crusoe processor. The processor is soldered onto the board so it is not an upgradeable system, but still, the unit marks the first ever system component available to the end user which is based upon Crusoe technology.

The complete system on a board is designed to comply with the 5.25-inch SBC form factor ultimately destined for POS, kiosks, Panel PCs, Firewall, security systems and book size PC's. Unfortunately the SBC form factor means the system board is not be compatible with current ATX case layouts - some modifications would be required to mount it in a typical mid-tower case.

The IB750 comes with 64MB SDRAM of onboard memory, 1 DIMM expansion slot, 1 PCI slot, dual Intel 82559 based 10/100 Fast Ethernet RJ-45 connectors, simultaneous dual independent display, 2 parallel ports, 2 USB ports, 4 COM ports. PC/104 extensions, DiskOnChip support, Digital I/O and a MicroPCI socket for various upgrades. The TM3400 chip shows off its' low power capabilities with power consumption ranging from 0.5 watts to ~ 2.2 watts with Transmeta's Long Run power management technology. A small heatsink is strapped onto the TM3400 but no fan is necessary for cooling.

The heatsink on the TM3400 Crusoe processor is quite small, and has had a portion of the fins removed. The offset in the fins is to allow the MicroPCI card to properly seat itself in the socket. The card locks in directly over top of the processor. No cooling fan is apparently required.

The single 168-pin DIMM slot sits parallel to the PCI slot and can accept a maximum of 256MB SDRAM. Two EIDE ports will allow for four UDMA / 33 hard drives or IDE devices to connect to the system.

The TM3400 is a 400Mhz - 533Mhz variant from the TM3XXX series of Crusoe processors. Based on 0.18 Micron technology and 128bit VLIW architecture, the processor has 64Kb of Level 1 Cache and 256Kb of Level 2 Cache according to Transmeta's documentation. Unlike the TM5XXX series of Crusoe, the TM3400 is compatible with only SDRAM, and not DDR RAM. It is also the only processor from the TM3XXX series to support LongRun power management.

Using the VIA VT82C686A/B chipset which has integrated SouthBridge, the IB750 uses a Lynx3D chipset to handle graphics and video output via a card which plugs into the MiniPCI slot, situated directly above the Crusoe processor. Emphasizing again the low heat output the Crusoe processor produces.

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