Posted to News on 26th Nov 2013, 12:56
Kontron premieres medical motherboards in series production
With the launch of the KTQ67/Flex-MED motherboard at the Medica 2013 (hall 15, stand C20) Kontron is - for the first time - introducing a standard Flex-ATX board with two EN60601-1 compliant isolated Ethernet ports. The Kontron KTQ67/Flex-MED offers a long-term availability of 7 years and in addition to the isolated LANs, it includes 2 DVI interfaces to drive medical imaging tasks on two HD monitors. The performance is scalable across the complete range of the powerful dual core and quad core desktop CPUs from Intel 's 3rd generation Core processors, making it easy to tailor the motherboard to a broad range of individual performance needs.
With the availability of these medical motherboards in volume production, sourcing and configuration for System Integrators and Hospital IT departments become an even easier and more convenient task. To deploy a medical PC, customers only have to choose an appropriate standard housing to finalise their individual system configuration. There is no longer any need to add an extra add-on card or to cover the cost of a customised board design in order to obtain galvanic isolated Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and EN13485-compliant manufacturing documentation. Customers can now benefit from a reduced total cost of ownership through the reduced bill of materials and an optimised supply chain management.
Kontron's first medical motherboard targets graphics and/or processing intensive medical applications found in nearly all healthcare environments, ranging from diagnostic work stations through to computers in operating theatres, at nursing stations and in consulting rooms, right up to bedside applications. Such systems are often connected to PACS or other hospital information systems (HIS). In OEM equipment this motherboard will be deployed as a back-end processing block and as a GUI controller for a variety of medical devices including stationary and semi-mobile ultrasound scanners, MRI and CT.
By making available a dedicated medical motherboard manufactured in series production, which features EN 60601-1-compliant LAN, Kontron is opening up new sales channels. Not only can OEMs now order smaller quantities, but Hospital IT departments can also do this in order to manage the computer equipment connected to the medical device grids on their own. The new Kontron medical motherboard is therefore not only tailored to medical OEMs, but also for the huge market of medical PCs that are deployed directly by IT specialists in hospitals, rehab and medical centres. Medical OEMs, VARs and medical end users will all benefit from the broader customer base, improved support and better economies of scale.
The feature set in detail
The Kontron medical motherboard KTQ67/Flex-MED is based on the Intel Q67 System Controller Hub and offers up to 32GB DDR3 RAM. It connects two independent displays via DVI. Apart from the two isolated Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, it also offers 12 USB 2.0 interfaces. Storage media can be connected via the 6× SATA interfaces (4× SATA150/300 and 2× SATA600) with SW RAID support (RAID 0/1/5/10). For expansion cards, PCIe ×16, PCIe ×4 and PCI 32bit (2×) slots are available. A multi-purpose Feature Connector supports up to 160 GPIOs. To achieve excellent signal qualities and optimise electromagnetic compatibility, the KTQ67/Flex-MED is based on more PCB layers than are normally found in conventional consumer motherboards. Intel 's Active Management Technology 8.0 is supported for remote management and easy maintenance, resulting in higher system availability and lower overall costs.
The new Kontron medical motherboard KTQ67/Flex-MED is available now and supports Microsoft Windows as well as various Linux distributions. RTOS support is available on request. More product information can be found at the Kontron KTQ67/Flex-MED medical motherboard's product website.
