COM-HPC Gets the Green Light

March 30, 2021

Helping usher in the new form-factor standards, a COM-HPC client module developed by congatec was unveiled earlier this month at Embedded World.

William G. Wong

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What you’ll learn:

What’s in the COM-HPC standard?
How to get started with COM-HPC.

The COM-HPC standard has now been ratified. And on that front, congatec highlighted its HPC/cTLU COM-HPC client at Embedded World earlier this month.

COM Express is a series of computer-on-module (COM) form-factor standards from PICMG. COM-HPC is just the latest COM targeting high-performance computing (HPC) client and server applications. A COM requires a carrier board to complete a solution, but it has the advantage of putting much of the design complexity in the module. It also allows developers to swap in different modules to provide a variety of power and performance options.

The COM-HPC standard spans five board sizes, addressing client and server implementations (Fig. 1). Clients come in sizes A, B, and C, while servers have the larger D and E form factors. Both utilize high-speed, 800-pin connectors to provide support for PCI Express Gen 5 and USB4, including Thunderbolt support.

1. COM-HPC boards come in various standard sizes with clients (A, B, C) being smaller than server COM-HPC boards (D, E).

The COM-HPC client supports 48 PCIe Gen 5 lanes (Fig. 2). It can provide up to a pair of 25-Gb Ethernet ports plus the ability to support up to four high-end video displays and high-quality audio. The form factor is able to work with the latest 11^th-generation Intel Core processors.

2. COM-HPC clients support USB 4/Thunderbolt, 25-Gb Ethernet, and Gen 5 PCI Express.

The server boards have space for DIMM sockets that can handle up to 1 TB of memory (Fig. 3). They can support up to 64 PCIe Gen 5 lanes and eight 25-Gb Ethernet ports. Platform management also is included in the standard.

3. The large COM-HPC server boards have space for socketed DRAM up to 1 TB.

Getting Started with COM-HPC

congatec’s COM-HPC starter kit includes its HPC/cTLU COM-HPC client module (Fig. 4). The module is based on Intel’s four-core, Core UP3 processor with a TDP from 12 to 28 W. The Intel Gen 12 Graphics can handle up to four independent 4k60p displays.

4. congatec’s HPC/cTLU client board has a matching carrier board for evaluation the COM-HPC standard.

The module includes a 4x PCIe Gen 4 and an 8x PCIe Gen 3 interface. Two USB 4.0 ports and two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports are in the mix as well. The two memory slots support a total of 64 GB of DDR4-3200 memory. The two 2.5-Gb Ethernet ports support time-sensitive networking (TSN).

The boards are designed for industrial and embedded applications. Extended temperature versions are available.

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

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