The GP3SSA from STx is a low-cost PowerQUICC III motherboard in Mini-ITX form
factor: it can use off-the-shelf cases and power supplies. I/O includes 1394, IDE, PCI, dual mini-PCI,
PMC, and copper Gigabit ethernet. This can form the base of your product—just add a PCI card for
any missing functionality and shut the lid!
GP3SSA advantages over an x86 motherboard
- Size is small 6.75 square compared to large ATX x86 boards (9.6 square or 9.6 x 12)
- PowerPC is low-power, fanless (fan could be a point of possible failure), silent
- Reliability is five-nines—industrial temperature and ruggedized offered
- 10-year life cycle or more for boards/parts
- Open Uboot—no bios, no hidden APIs
- Line rate secure, stateful and deterministic (QoS) packet handling
GP3SSA features (MPC8555 and MPC 8541 CPU)
- e500 Book E core available from 800 MHz up to 1.5 GHz
- 32-bit, dual-issue, superscalar, seven-stage pipeline
- Line rate integrated security processor function
- Dual Mini-PCI slots (one on each bus for QoS)
- PMC slot expansion, card-edge PCI slot, and local bus
- ATX power connector
- Dual Gigabit Ethernet
- High-density DDR RAM module
- Flash (boot) up to 32 mbytes
- IDE controller with drive bays for HDD and/or CD-rom
- IEEE 1394 Firewire port
- RTC, enet/serial, COP, JTAG
