Product Description:

Beckhoff’s CB4021-0004 belongs to the CB Modular Motherboards series and serves as a compact x86 control platform for embedded automation PCs, panel controllers, or decentralized I/O stations. It combines processor, chipset, memory, and field interfaces on a 3.77 × 3.54 in. printed-circuit board. The board acts as the computing core that executes PLC runtimes, visualization tasks, or machine-level data handling inside control cabinets where space and power budgets are limited.

The board is equipped with an AMD Geode LX800 CPU clocked at 500 MHz, providing deterministic performance for soft-real-time applications without active cooling. An on-die L2 cache of 128 KB reduces main-memory access latency, which benefits cyclic control loops. A single SO-DIMM200 socket accepts up to 1 GB of RAM; this capacity suits compact operating systems such as Windows Embedded Standard or TwinCAT/BSD. The memory must be DDR-400, so the bus synchronizes at 200 MHz to match the processor’s front-side clock. Integrated Ethernet supports 10/100Base-T for deterministic fieldbus tunneling via EtherCAT over TCP/IP, while four downstream ports rated at 4 × USB 2.0 allow local connection of HMI touchscreens, service keys, or distributed I/O hubs without additional host controllers.

Electrical supply is a single rail at 5 V ±5%, simplifying backplane design and enabling direct power sharing with digital I/O modules; typical idle draw is 1.27 A, rising to 1.56 A under full load. Nonvolatile program and image storage resides on a soldered 2 GB SSD, eliminating rotating media for vibration-prone installations. The PCB footprint of 96 × 90 mm matches Beckhoff’s CB form factor, so the module can slide directly into standardized carrier boards that add analog inputs, motion interfaces, or industrial backplane connectors. Additional features include two RS232/RS485-selectable serial ports for legacy drives and an 18-bit LVDS TFT link that drives low-cost operator displays without external converters.