OnLogic reveals quartet of Alder Lake systems with up to 14 LAN ports

OnLogic reveals quartet of Alder Lake systems with up to 14 LAN ports

Jan 12, 2022 — by Eric Brown

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OnLogic unveiled a “Karbon 800 Series” of 4x embedded PCs based on Intel’s up to 16-core 12th Gen Alder Lake-S CPUs with up to 64GB RAM and options including PCIe Gen 4 x16, hot-swap SATA, 4G, Wi-Fi 6E, -40 to 70°C, and up to 14 LAN ports.

OnLogic has announced four Karbon 800 Series embedded computers that run Windows or Linux 20.04 LTS on Intel’s recently announced 12th Gen Alder Lake platform. This is really a pre-announcement as there are relatively few details and the systems will not ship until Q2.

Karbon 800 Series
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The Karbon 800, which follows OnLogic’s 9th Gen Coffee Lake powered Karbon 700 and later, Elkhart Lake based Karbon 310, is the second system level announcement we have seen for Alder Lake after Vecow’s ECX-3000. The systems support machine learning, AI, advanced manufacturing, automation, and other Industry 4.0 and Industrial IoT applications.

The Karbon 800 Series will be available in four highly customizable models that support up to Core i9 Alder Lake models with up to 16 cores and 24 threads. This profile tells us that at least some, it not all, the systems support the higher-end Alder Lake-S processers, which are used by the Vecow system. It is unclear if some also support the mid-range, more power-efficient Alder Lake-H models, which top out at 14 cores with 20 threads.

Karbon 800 Series
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The four Karbon 800 models are as follows, listed by ascending size, storage, and PCIe and “ModBay” expansion (see also the feature chart farther below):

• Karbon 801 — compact system with optional NVMe, 4G, and WiFi/BT
• Karbon 802 — adds dual 2.5-inch SATA SSD with optional hot swap and dual ModBay expansion
• Karbon 803 — only a single 2.5-inch bay (no hot swap) and no ModBays but with PCIe Gen4 x16
• Karbon 804 — optional storage up to 6x 2.5-inch RAID array with hot swap plus dual ModBays and either PCIe Gen4 x16 or 2x PCIe Gen4 x8

Standard features include support for up to 64GB DDR4-3200 ECC or non-ECC RAM (compared to a 32GB limit on the Karbon 700 Series). The systems will be limited to dual display support rather than the triple displays offered by Karbon 700, which suggests OnLogic is steering these systems more clearly at the industrial sector rather than signage and commercial embedded applications. It is unclear if the -40 to 70°C support is standard, or like most Karbon features, optional.

Feature comparison between (l to r) Karbon 801, Karbon 802, Karbon 803, and Karbon 804
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OnLogic’s homegrown ModBay expansion slots support a variety of connectivity and storage options, including up to 14x LAN ports and the optional, 6x 2.5in SSD RAID array. ModBays may also the source of other listed options including NVMe storage, 4G LTE, and WiFi 6E, an 802.11ax variant that adds a third 6GHz band based on 1200MHz of new spectrum. OnLogic did not list standard features, which on the Karbon 700 include 6x USB 3.1, 2x COM, 3x GbE, 3x DP, 3x M.2, 2x mini-PCIe, and other I/Os.

Like the 11th Gen Tiger Lake-U and Tiger Lake-H processors, Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake uses a 10nm fabrication process, in this case, an “Enhanced SuperFin” design called Intel 7. The 12th Gen CPUs debut a hybrid, heterogeneous core architecture somewhat like Arm’s Big.Little with DynamIQ multi-core orchestration. Alder Lake uses a combination of “Golden Cove” Performance-cores (P-cores) and lower power “Gracemount” Efficient-cores (E-cores).

Like Tiger Lake, Alder Lake features up to 96EU Iris Xe graphics, as well as Intel Deep Learning Boost (DL-Boost) and Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 2 (AVX2) for AI acceleration across CPU and GPU cores. The 12th Gen platform advances to up to 4800 MT/s DDR5 RAM and up to 16-lane PCIe Gen5. The Alder Lake-S and Alder Lake-H are the two higher end models, followed by the upcoming Alder Lake-P and 9-15W Alder Lake-U.

Further information

The first four Karbon 800 Series computers will launch in early Spring (Q2 2022) with pricing undisclosed. More information may be found in OnLogic’s announcement and product page.