Intended to appeal to designers of embedded systems that require fanless operation, the Qseven single-board computer (SBC) specification created by a consortium including congatec AG and SECO and endorsed by the Small Form-Factor SIG has a maximum power consumption of around 12 W and a novel thermal cooling interface to aid in heat transfer. The specification provides for a 70 mm² footprint and offers two different connector heights, 5.5 mm and 7.8 mm.
Provided with an onboard graphics controller with output options for two 24-bit LVDS, an SDVO, a DisplayPort, and an HDMI input as well as an API software interface for embedded features such as a watchdog timer, I²C bus, LCD backlight control, BIOS user storage area, and temperature control. Communications is through a variety of interfaces including four PCI Express lanes, two SATA, six USB 2.0, two SDIO 8 Bit, one 1000BaseT Ethernet, and a VIP, an HDA, an I²C Bus, and an LPC connection.