Product Description:

The C9900-C528 is a CPU option card from Beckhoff, released within the C9 PC Accessories series. As an accessory, it provides x86 processing capacity to the company’s Industrial PCs, enabling deterministic control, data logging, and visualization tasks on the plant floor. By embedding a mobile-class processor and related chipset on a compact form factor, the board contributes to scalable performance while maintaining the long-term availability required in machine automation. Its hardware parameters are tuned for 24-hour operation inside control cabinets where airflow and power budgets are limited.

At the center of the board is an Intel Pentium M 745 processor. Under normal mains power, the core frequency reaches 1.8 GHz, while a system bus of 400 MHz links the CPU to memory and peripheral controllers, reducing wait states during cyclic program execution. A level-2 cache size of 2 MB stores repeatedly accessed code blocks from the PLC runtime so that motion and safety loops are served from on-die memory rather than slower external RAM. The silicon is produced on a 90 nm process, a geometry that lowers leakage current compared with earlier nodes and therefore helps the module fit into fanless enclosures that dominate decentralized I/O stations.

For battery-backed operation, such as maintaining real-time clock and soft-shutdown routines during short power interruptions, the core speed drops to 600 MHz, extending uptime without exceeding the board’s thermal envelope. Even at full load, the package dissipates only 21 W of heat, allowing passive conduction to the housing instead of relying on forced air. The processor uses the Dothan code name, meaning it supports SpeedStep technology for dynamic voltage adjustment when CPU utilization drops. These power-saving behaviors help the card run high-level programming environments with minimal cabinet cooling infrastructure.