What are the differences between industrial motherboards and commercial motherboards?

The industrial control motherboard is an important part of the industrial computer, which can adapt to the complex environment of the industrial site and long-term high-load work. The differences between Advantech IPCs and commercial motherboards are:

1. Materials and design of components

commercial motherboard

Commercial motherboards, due to their relatively fast replacement speed, pursue the timeliness of products and the market positioning of their own products. The requirements for component selection are general, and the materials used for components can be used at ordinary levels. Such as capacitors, commercial motherboards use a lot of common electrolytic capacitors, one is for the use of commercial market products, and the other is to reduce the cost of the motherboard.

Industrial control board

1. Components of industrial control motherboard

In the selection of materials for industrial control motherboards, components that have been verified for a long time and high requirements will be selected to ensure high reliability requirements of products under complex conditions.

2. Capacitor of industrial control board

The industrial control motherboard uses high-quality SMD solid capacitors, tantalum capacitors, and ceramic capacitors. Commercial motherboards basically use a large number of pin-type electrolytic capacitors, because electrolytic capacitors are low in cost and large in capacitance. In terms of nature, electrolytic capacitors are not as stable as tantalum capacitors and ceramic capacitors, their lifespan is not as long as they are, and their high temperature resistance is not as good as theirs. Chip capacitors are more stable than pin capacitors. In terms of price, tantalum capacitors are more expensive than ordinary electrolytic capacitors, and due to the small capacitance of tantalum capacitors, more capacitors need to be used when used on motherboards. The cost of tantalum capacitors alone is dozens of times that of electrolytic capacitors. , which is one of the reasons that the cost price of industrial control motherboards is higher than that of commercial motherboards.

3. PCB of industrial control board

The commercial motherboard adopts a 4-layer PCB design. The general PCB circuit board is divided into four layers. The two layers above Z and below Z are the signal layer, and the two middle layers are the ground layer and the power layer. The ground and power layers are placed in the middle. . The industrial control motherboard adopts a PCB circuit board design with more than 6 layers, which is designed to strengthen the anti-electromagnetic interference and electromagnetic compatibility of the motherboard, and enhance the stability of the motherboard.

4. The service life of the industrial control motherboard

Different from the 2 to 3-year service life of commercial motherboards, most industrial control motherboards require a service life of more than 3 years, and some high-quality industrial control motherboards even have a service life of 5-7 years.

Second, the difference of CPU

1. CPU power consumption

Industrial control motherboards generally use low-power CPUs to adapt to complex environmental applications in the industrial control industry.

2. The circuit design of the CPU

Because the industrial control motherboard needs to adapt to the industrial application environment of wide temperature and wide voltage, the adaptable range of the industrial control motherboard to the voltage is wider than that of the commercial motherboard, and the voltage range of the industrial control motherboard is generally between 9-36V. For the circuit layout and design of the CPU, the requirements are more precise.

3. Different anti-electromagnetic wave interference ability

Due to the market positioning and good use environment of commercial motherboards, their products are generally only tested for commercial-grade electromagnetic compatibility, and their ability to resist electromagnetic interference is low. Because industrial control motherboards are aimed at the industrial market, they have high requirements on the ability to resist electromagnetic wave interference, and need to pass EMI, EMC and other tests and certifications.

3. Production scheduling process and testing process

Industrial motherboards are often developed based on certain applications and may only be adapted to certain applications, so their usage is very limited, while commercial motherboards are popular, so they can be put into production at one time. Due to the production volume, the cost allocation of industrial motherboards is much higher than that of commercial motherboards. This is also an aspect of the cost difference between industrial motherboards and commercial motherboards.

Some large manufacturers test commercial motherboards through T3 three test procedures: ICT, FUNTION, MANU. The vast majority of manufacturers only pass the T1 test process for commercial motherboards: ICT. ICT is a circuit test. Whether there is an open circuit or a short circuit, no peripherals (CPU, DIMM and other fixtures) are added at this time. The purpose is to avoid burning the fixture during the later FUNTION. FUNTION is mainly a function test, and peripherals such as CPU and DIMM will be added. After a boot test, all problems will be found here, and the basic FUNTION can be passed. MANU is the actual measurement, all peripherals are connected, boot test, compatibility test and so on.

Before the production of industrial control motherboards, it is necessary to strictly pass multiple testing procedures, generally T5~T7. In addition to ICT, FUNTION, and MANU, tests such as temperature, vibration, and safety are also required to ensure the quality of each motherboard.

4. Dimensions

Commercial motherboards currently mainly use the ATX architecture.

In order to adapt to a variety of application environments, industrial control motherboards use motherboards with high integration, small size, and various sizes, including 3-inch boards, 5-inch boards, ATX, Micro-ATX, LPX, half-length cards, and full-length cards. specifications.

5. Interface support

Commercial motherboards often only provide 4 PCI slots. Due to the constraints of PCI specifications, the driving capability of PCI4 is basically attenuated. Therefore, most commercial motherboards only provide 3 PCI slots.

In addition to supporting PCI and PCIE slots, the industrial control motherboard can also support Mini PCIE, COM port, USB port and other interfaces. Embedded GPIO bus can realize GPI and GPO functions. In addition, industrial half-length cards and full-length cards can cooperate with the backplane to support multiple PCI, PCIE, and Mini PCIE expansions. Of course, embedded motherboards such as 3.5-inch are customized specifications, and their scalability will not be considered too much.

6. Use environment

Industrial motherboards often work in complex environments (humidity, vibration, dust, radiation, high temperature, etc.), while most commercial motherboards can only operate in stable environments (indoors, room temperature, etc.).

7. Protection function

Commercial motherboards do not offer any protection. Advantech industrial control motherboards are specially designed to realize automatic watchdog restart, anti-surge shock and other functions when encountering abnormal situations such as crashes, fully ensuring the high stability of the system in harsh environments.

8. Customization

Once an ordinary commercial motherboard is produced, it can no longer be changed according to market demand, and there is no customized design at all. The industrial control motherboard can flexibly meet the subsequent special needs of customers, realize customization, and better and more perfectly match the customer's use demand environment.