SAM440EP is the first modular motherboard produced by us. Sam's CORE is the PowerPC 440, a System On Chip (SoC) produced by AMCC under license from IBM.

One of the main features of the PowerPC 440EP is the presence, together with the CPU, of a number of integrated peripherals. This allows us to build a complete system with a huge savings of both development and debug time, with less components and space used on the PCB. This also results in a significant cost reduction for the customer.

As a consequence the northbridge/southbridge combination (like the ArticiaS/VIA686B) is not present on the board. Part of their functionality is built into the CPU and the balance is provided by other components and devices.

For the specific model of CPU mounted on SAM, the 440EP, we have the following integrated peripherals:

- DDR memory controller

- PCI controller

- Flash memory devices controller

- USB 1.1 host and USB 2.0 device controller

- 2 Ethernet 10/100 ports

- Up to 4 serial ports

- 2 I2C interfaces

- SPI interface

- 64 pins for General Purpose I/O

Physically the 440EP is a chip of 35mmx35mm, with a PBGA packaging with 456 pins. It is built with CMOS (0.13 um) technology, has a very low power consumption (only 3 Watts at 533Mhz) and it does not require any active cooling system.