The CX9020 Embedded PC is a fanless model and is equipped with a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor. It is suitable for a range of PLC and motion control applications, says Beckhoff Automation, in small- and medium-sized machines, systems or buildings. A multi-interface can be user-configured, if required, for extensions from an audio interface up to the connection of fieldbus masters or slaves. The compact PC is a DIN rail-mountable controller and includes a microSD card with a 256Mbyte storage capacity. It automatically detects the connected bus terminals (K-bus) or EtherCAT terminals (E-bus) and switches to the respective mode for system management. The CPU has 1Gbyte of internal DDR3 RAM. There is also 128kbyte of NOVRAM for data storage in the event of a power failure. The basic version features two 10/100Mbit/s Ethernet ports (internal switch), four USB 2.0 connections and a DVI-D interface. The multi-optional interface allows for an additional interface, e.g. for EtherCAT (slave only), ProfiNet, Ethernet/IP, ProfiBus, CANopen, DeviceNet, serial interface (RS232/RS422/RS485) or audio. The Cortex A8 processor has a hardware-based floating point unit. This is claimed to make floating point operations (REAL, LREAL) significantly faster, for motion control. The operating system used is Microsoft Windows Embedded Compact 7.
