Copyright
©
2012
congatec
AG
TCEDm10
30/94
5
Additional Features
5.1
congatec Board Controller (cBC)
The conga-TCA is equipped with a STMicroelectronics STM32 microcontroller. This onboard microcontroller plays an important role for most of
the congatec embedded/industrial PC features. It fully isolates some of the embedded features such as system monitoring or the I²C bus from
the x86 core architecture, which results in higher embedded feature performance and more reliability, even when the x86 processor is in a low
power mode. It also ensures that the congatec embedded feature set is fully compatible amongst all congatec modules.
5.2
Board Information
The cBC provides a rich data-set of manufacturing and board information such as serial number, EAN number, hardware and firmware
revisions, and so on. It also keeps track of dynamically changing data like runtime meter and boot counter.
5.3
Watchdog
The conga-TCA is equipped with a multi stage watchdog solution that is triggered by software. The COM Express™ Specification does
not provide support for external hardware triggering of the Watchdog, which means the conga-TCA does not support external hardware
triggering. For more information about the Watchdog feature see the BIOS setup description section 9.4.2 of this document and application
note AN3_Watchdog.pdf on the congatec AG website at www.congatec.com.
Note
The conga-TCA module does not support the watchdog NMI mode. COM Express type 6 modules do not support the PCI bus and therefore the
PCI_SERR# signal is not available. There is no way to drive a NMI to the processor without the presence of the PCI_SERR# PCI bus signal.
5.4
I
2
C Bus
The conga-TCA offers support for the frequently used I
2
C bus. Thanks to the I
2
C host controller in the cBC the I
2
C bus is multimaster capable
and runs at fast mode.
