Kontron pITX-SP - Manual (Page 40)

KTD-S0002-I Page 35 Power and Thermal Management
p ITX-SP User's Guide
17 Power and Thermal Management
17.1 Cooling Options
A heat-spreader plate is already mounted. External cooling must be provided to maintain the heat-sprea-
der plate at proper operating temperatures. Under worst case conditions the cooling mechanism must
maintain an ambient air temperature of 60°C or less.
The aluminum slugs and thermal pads on the underside of the heat-spreader plate implement thermal
interfaces between the heat-spreader plate and the major heat generating components on the pITX-SP.
You can use many thermal management solutions with the heat-spreader plates including active and
passive approaches. The optimum cooling solution varies - depending on the application and environmen-
tal conditions.
Attention: After the heat-sink has been mounted it cannot be removed anymore because after the warming up of the board the
thermal-foil between the both components will melt and bond the heat-sink to the heat-spreader plate.
17.2 SpeedStep Technology
The Intel ® Atom processor offers the Intel ® Enhanced SpeedStep TM technology that automatically switches
between maximum performance mode and battery optimized mode depending on the needs of the appli-
cation being run. When powered by a battery or running in idle mode the processor drops to lower fre-
quencies conserving battery life while maintaining a high level of performance. The previous frequency is
set back automatically when the operating mode changes.
17.3 C-State Control
The Intel ® chipset US15W (Poulsbo) has been implemented the control for dynamically starting and stop-
ping system clocks and power. The states are passing through C0 (full on) to C4 one after another. The C-
state ends when a break event occurs (e.g. an IRQ or SMI).
17.4 Throttling Mode
Throttling can minimize power consumption when the processor works in C-state C0 (full on). This mode
enables software controlled STPCLK throttling - other C-states turn off this feature (each re-entry to C0
restores the previous state). Seven steps are avail able (12.5%, 25%, 37.5%, ..., 87.5%).