FAQ

This page contains answers to commonly-asked questions about Gateworks Product. If there is anything here that is not clear/available, please contact support@…

Is the GW SBC FCC/CE/UL, REACH/RoHS/Conflict Materials Certified?

FCC/CE

Simple answer is that it depends. Because our product is used in various applications, it entirely depends on the application at hand since FCC & CE testing must be done on the complete system which includes enclosure, cables, radios, antenna, power supply, etc. Because of this, we do not have FCC/CE certifications because that is useless to our customers. However, we will work with you on getting your completed system FCC/CE certified. We have a long history of customers that have taken our SBC's and went through the various processes to get certifications on their end product.

In order to help you initially with this processes, we sell pre-certified power supplies, but if there is one that you’re interested in, we can provide the datasheet which will list it's certifications.

We also recommend you use pre-certified wifi radios. By using a pre-certified radio you can avoid having to re-certify the radio which can be more expensive since it is classified as a transmitting device. Note you must use the radio in the same configuration and with same antenna (gain) as it was certified. Check with your certification house for exact rules and regulations.

All of our products have been designed to reduce both conducted and radiated emissions and most customers make it through the approval process with minimal effort, assuming they have an adequate enclosure solution. We can also work directly with your certification house to provide the necessary documents for the certification process.

Typical costs for FCC/CE certification run from $5K to $10K assuming a pre-certified radio is used.

Gateworks recently went through an EMI chamber test on some products in the Ventana family and found very impressive results. Sitting idle, the boards passed without an enclosure or any other EMI reducing solution.

Please read more about our testing results and other FCC information here.

Tips for passing emissions include, but not limited to:

• Using metal enclosures
• All cabling must be shielded
• Proper grounding to the board

To view the emitting clocks on a Ventana board, use the command:

cat /sys/kernel/debug/clk/clk_summary

UL

UL (Underwriters Laboratories) conducts electrical safety testing.

Gateworks SBCs are not pre UL certified. This is due to UL certification requiring a much larger scope of equipment, including power supply, voltages used, etc. Many Gateworks customers have gone through UL testing and passed. Gateworks boards have been designed to pass UL testing. Gateworks is more than happy to provide information to the UL representative during testing if needed.

REACH/Conflict Materials/RoHS & IPC

Gateworks uses 100% RoHS solder and builds to IPC-A-610 Class 2 standards. For more information on our manufacturing practices, please see our main site ​here.

Standards which are followed:

• IPC-A-600 class 2
• IPC-A-610 class 2
• IPC-J-STD-001 class 2
• IPC-7711/21 class 2

Contact sales @ gateworks.com for RoHS/REACH/Conflict Material compliance statements for individual products. Gateworks utilizes the Silicon Expert database for this compliance information.

Shock, Vibration, Mil810, etc

Gateworks does not take its boards through formal shock and vibration testing since this is typically done on the complete system, including the enclosure which can be a significant factor. Additionally, there are a large number of standards/requirements which are dependent upon the specific application.

Gateworks does use best design practice standards to insure our boards work in these type of environments and many Gateworks customers have fielded our products in very harsh and high vibration environments such as mining vehicles, construction equipment, farm equipment, military vehicles, drones/UAVs and airplanes We also can offer as part of our customer special program, additional processes such as BGA underfill, conformal coating and epoxy and stake bonding of specific components for additional ruggedization. 

With regards to the humidity and moisture requirements, conformal coating is typically used to meet these standards and Gateworks can provide this as an additional process for customer specials.

What is Gateworks Export Classification?

International Terms and Definitions Export Administration Regulations (EAR)

ECCN:

Export Control Classification Number (ECCN) is a specific alpha-numeric code that identifies the level of export control for articles, technology and software (collectively, "Items") that are exported from member states of the Wassenaar arrangement: ​​http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassenaar_Arrangement including the United States. The ECCN classification that applies to any specific item is determined by referring to a table that is issued for the United States by the Bureau of Industry and Security: ​​http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Industry_and_Security. See the Export Administration Regulations(EAR): ​​http://www.gpo.gov/bis/index.html, codified at 15 C.F.R. ​​http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Federal_Regulations. The ECCN table contains hundreds of ECCN codes that are organized according to the technical parameters and/or end use of the hardware, software or technology that is being exported.

Gateworks classifications are listed on our main website here: ​https://www.gateworks.com/support/export-product-compliance/

This typically will mean that the SED document indicates “NLR” which means “No License Required”.

The following restrictions also apply to all products that incorporate Gateworks boards and are going to be exported outside of the United States. The ultimate consignee must certify that the products will not be reexported without a license to the extent required in the relevant part of the US Export Administration Regulations (EAR), when the item will be used:

1. directly or indirectly in any nuclear activity and in any country other than countries in the Supplement No. 3 to EAR Part 744.

​https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2019-title15-vol2/xml/CFR-2019-title15-vol2-part744.xml

2. in the design, development, production or use of missiles in or by a country listed in Country Group D: 4 (as itemized in Supplement No 1 to EAR Part 740.

​https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2012-title15-vol2/pdf/CFR-2012-title15-vol2-part740-appNo-.pdf

3. in the design, development, production stockpiling, or use of chemical or biological weapons in or by a country listed in Country Group D:3 (as itemized in Supplement No 1 to EAR Part 740)

​https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2012-title15-vol2/pdf/CFR-2012-title15-vol2-part740-appNo-.pdf

4. in nuclear propulsion plants in any country.

5. in the design, development, production, maintenance, or use of military items in or by the People’s Republic of China.

6. by an entity listed in the Entity List (as itemized in Supplement No 4 to EAR Part 744)

​https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2019-title15-vol2/xml/CFR-2019-title15-vol2-part744.xml

7. by any Specially Designated Global Terrorists, Specially Designated Terrorists, and Foreign Terrorist Organizations, as identified in appendix A to 31 CFR Chapter V (OFAC).

​https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/CFR-2009-title31-vol3/CFR-2009-title31-vol3-subtitleB-chapV-appA

8. by any customer in an embargoed country listed in Country group E:2 (in Supplement No. 1 to EAR part 740) or in a terrorist supporting country listed in Country Group E:1 (as itemized in Supplement No. 1 to EAR Part 740).

​https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2012-title15-vol2/pdf/CFR-2012-title15-vol2-part740-appNo-.pdf

1. by or on behalf of any denied person as in the Denied Person List maintained by the Bureau of Industry and Security.

​https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/the-denied-persons-list

Harmonized Codes (HTS):

All of the imports and export codes used by the United States are based on the Harmonized Tariff System (HTS). The HTS assigns 6-digit codes for general categories. Countries which use the HTS are allowed to define commodities at a more detailed level than 6-digits, but all definitions must be within that 6-digit framework. The U.S. defines products using 10-digit HTS (Harmonized Tariff Code) codes. Exports codes (which the U.S. calls Schedule B) are administered by the U.S. Census Bureau. Import codes are administered by the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC).

To see the Gateworks HTS codes, visit the ​Gateworks Export Compliance Page

Other reference links:

• ​https://hts.usitc.gov/?query=8517.62.0090
• ​https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/schedules/b/2022/index.html

What is the PCB Flammability Rating?

The PCB is rated at UL 94V-0

Do your boards come with wireless/bluetooth?

WiFi / Bluetooth is not included on most of our boards and instead we have Mini-PCIe slots that accept WiFi/Bluetooth radios. Gateworks has recently released a new Ventana model called the GW5910 which does incorporate a pre-certified Laird Sterling LWB WiFi/BLE module down on the board. See here for more info on this ​product. Additional WiFi info can be found here on this page as well here.

What wireless radios do you support?

Typically radios with Atheros chipsets. Read more about the radios on our Wireless Wiki Page.

What input voltage does your SBC accept?

Typically, we accept 8-60VDC input, but you should look in your User Manual for actual voltages accepted by your Gateworks product as they can vary greatly, even within the same family of product.

Is there a battery charging circuit on your board?

No, this should be handled off the board.

How much power / current can I get / run over a specific connector / Mini-PCIe slot?

Gateworks builds very robust power supplies for its 3.3V rail. This rail is primarily used by the wireless radios on the Mini-PCI and Mini-PCIe slots.

Most Ventana User Manuals indicate the wattage available to the Mini-PCIe sockets. For example, under the standard features you will typically see:

• 30W shared between all Mini-PCIe Sockets
• 15W maximum per Mini-PCIe slot.

On a Ventana series board with a 2x5 expansion connector, the pins are rated to 1 amp. Therefore, at 3.3V this would be 3.3W of support. Note that GPIO lines are limited in current, please consult the user manual.

To find current ratings of the pins, consult the connectors datasheet.

5V rails will depend on the 5V IC behind it.

• Ventana GW5510
  • Application Connector, J3
    • 3.3V can support 1.5A
    • 5.0V can support 1A

Can I clock down the processor for lower power?

Absolutely. However, in order to realize the full effect of getting 'lower power' from shifting the frequency of the CPU down, you will also need dynamic voltage scaling. Currently, this only supported on the Ventana family, of which more information can be found on our DVFS page.

What does the reset cause indicate?

When the Gateworks board boots up, information regarding the Reset cause comes out on the serial console.

Depending on how the board was 'reset', different messages will appear:

• POR - Power on Reset, this simply means the primary power supply was the cause of the reset. You can see this type of message if you unplug the power supply and plug it back in. However, this could also be caused by our GSC as it has the ability to toggle the primary power supply. Please see more information about that feature on our GSC page.
• WDOG - Watchdog, this means that the watchdog timer expired and was the cause for the board reset

Some of the newer boards / versions of software also feature a watchdog reset cause.

• TOUT - One of the i.mx6's watchdogs timed out. This means that the watchdog was not serviced within the serviceable amount of time.
• SFTW - The user caused a reset of the board (e.g. typing a "reboot" on the command line). Please see the example below:

  U-Boot SPL 2014.04-00165-g9fd0ca4 (Sep 25 2014 - 14:52:25)
  NAND : 256 MiB
  
  
  U-Boot 2014.04-g6c30fe4 (Mar 27 2015 - 08:20:14)
  
  CPU:   Freescale i.MX6Q rev1.2 at 792 MHz
  Reset cause: WDOG
   WDOG1 Reset cause: TOUT
   WDOG2 Reset cause: POR
  

What throughput does the PCIe lane support?

PCIe bandwidth depends on the link established between the host controller and the peripheral (gen1, gen2, or gen3) as well as CPU and interrupt processing overhead. see PCI for more details

Why are certain areas on the board warm with regards to temperature? Why is my board hot?

Please review our Thermal management page here

How is MTBF calculated for Gateworks SBCs?

Gateworks uses the MTBF parts count method in MILHDBK-217F, Notices 1 and 2. The calculations are based upon Ground Benign environment at 55C.

• Things like connectors, MOSFET's, PLX switches, components that generate heat, drastically shorten the lifespan of the board. Some of our boards such as the GW5100 are very basic, its MTBF is calculated at 94.3 years. This may seem unrealistic but consider MTBF is biased on the board being at a constant temperature in a controlled environment, so it's not accounting for weather, salty air, dust, and other things we associate with ageing. MTBF is not intended to be a real world calculation, it's only to provide a baseline so different products can be assessed against each other in a measurable way.

Do the Gateworks boards support RTOS / Real Time OS

Gateworks does not have any direct default support for any real time operating systems. Gateworks boards are very open source and anyone is welcome to add a RTOS to Gateworks if they would like and are able.

How to Improve Boot Speed / Times

Please refer to the below wiki page for speeding up the booting process, lowering the time to boot. Boot Speed Wiki Page

How to connect a LED to Ventana GPIO

Ventana GPIO typically is:

• 3.3V
• 332 Ohm Series Resistor
• Current is rated around 12-13mA.

Read more here: ventana/DigitalIO

How Many Wireless Clients can Connect to my Access Point?

This is highly dependent on the amount of data being passed between the access point and client. If each client is streaming video from the AP, then the limit will be much smaller (estimate 3-10). If each client is only querying a small HTML webpage, this limit could be higher (estimate 15-30). There is no 'defined' limit and Gateworks recommends testing with the exact hardware (variations between processor speed, cores, memory, wireless technology, etc). One third party company has a solution to handle many clients, shown here

I see an imx-sdma message and is it an error?

It is common to see the line on Ventana boards:

[   60.366404] imx-sdma 20ec000.sdma: external firmware not found, using ROM firmware

SDMA: Smart Dynamic Memory Allocation.

The sdma firmware was removed from our OpenWrt BSP because it is no longer necessary any longer.

It was needed for imx i2s audio in general but now the upstream kernel drivers have been modified to no longer need it. The licensing of this firmware was keeping it out of OpenWrt upstream which is why we wanted to remove it.

The message itself isn't an error. We could remove the firmware loading altogether but they haven't done that upstream in Linux so we don't think it would be right for us to do it in OpenWrt's kernel.

There are many kernel messages that sometimes are misleading, making people think there is an error when it is nothing to be concerned about.

This message may sit on the console for a little while, but if you hit the return key on your keyboard, you can quickly get a command prompt earlier.

You can try to remove this by modifying the device tree, but note Gateworks has not tried or tested this:

• ​https://github.com/Gateworks/linux-imx6/blob/gateworks_fslc_3.14_1.0.x_ga/arch/arm/boot/dts/imx6qdl.dtsi#L841

Here are some links you can read more about the Freescale CPU:

• ​https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/devicetree/bindings/dma/fsl-imx-sdma.txt
• ​https://www.nxp.com/products/microcontrollers-and-processors/arm-based-processors-and-mcus/i.mx-applications-processors/i.mx-6-processors:IMX6X_SERIES
• ​https://community.nxp.com

Why doesn't the reboot or shutdown command work on my system?

The reboot and shutdown command originated on desktop computer systems with ATX power supplies. The Gateworks boards are powered over DC and are constantly connected to the power source, thus these commands are not typically recommended on embedded systems.

Thus, the question arises, what would one expect when using the shutdown command on a Gateworks embedded board? The command itself cannot actually unplug the physical power cord.

The reboot command, in it's natural form would only reset the CPU briefly, but often so fast that the entire set of system peripherals don't properly get reset. Thus, Gateworks has steered the reboot command to use a GSC sleep for 2 seconds to act like a reset/reboot, while actually fully power cycling the main supply. This is only implemented in Gateworks BSPs that contain the proper GSC drivers and will not necessarily exist in some of the more mainline releases using mainline kernels. Read more on the GSC Reboot Wiki Page

Does Newport support 10GbE or SFP+ ?

The Newport family of boards supports 1GbE by default.

The CPU is capable of handling 10GbE ports. A custom board could be built to enable this.

Please read more here: newport/ethernet

Please email Gateworks at sales@gateworks.com to discuss more.

What power conditioning does Gateworks offer on the SBCs?

Gateworks has very sturdy and robust power supplies that typically use a wide voltage DC input (8-60VDC for most boards). Gateworks will typically put a series diode for reverse polarity protection and a TVS for overvoltage transient protection.

For example, here is more specifications on a Ventana GW5220:

• Gateworks has power conditioning circuitry on the VIN input which consists of a reverse polarity protection diode, a couple of X2Y EMI supression caps and a transient voltage protection diode which kicks in at 60V. Gateworks has had many customers use our boards for in vehicle applications with good results. The TVS device is the SMAJ58A. It provides IEC61000-4-2 ESD, IEC61000-4-4 EFT and IEC61000-4-5 surge protection.

Are there any TPM ( Trusted Platform Module ) or Encryption chips on the SBCs?

Yes. Read about the different board families below (Newport, Ventana, etc)

Besides on-board chips, it may be possible to use third party Mini-PCIe cards to add this functionality. A custom card could be created or perhaps there may be some available from other third parties.

Note the Gateworks System Controller (GSC) found on all Gateworks Ventana and Newport boards supports tamper detection along with a secure key area in the EEPROM which can be used for key storage. See here for more info.

Newport

The Newport GW630x and GW640x have an optional TPM, the Maxim DS28C22 for Secure Authentication and Encryption. This is available as an optional load on orders of 100 pieces or more. It is required to work with Maxim to get the device pre-programmed with a key. Typically this would require a significant volume order and is meant for larger volume deployments. See here for ​datasheet.

Secure boot / trusted boot requires the -AUC or -AUS variant of the CN80XX processor which is not the default on Newport standard product boards.

The trusted boot documentation requires an NDA with Marvell directly.

Contact Gateworks sales if you wish to use Trusted boot on a Gateworks Custom or Special.

Read more newport/encryption

Ventana

There are not any specific TPM chips on the Ventana boards. A TPM has been added on some custom designs for other customers for high volume projects.

Please review the following links for Ventana:

• ventana/security
• ventana/encryption

Do your boards support Wake on LAN?

No, this feature is not available on any Gateworks SBC. In most cases using POE will be the most effective method of powering on and off the board with Ethernet.

I'm using a version of Linux without a GSC driver, what do I lose and is there a work around?

Getting our GSC driver to be adopted by the mainline kernel community has been an up hill battle, hence the long delay in its implementation. Many of its features are still accessible using I2C commands and other methods:

• The RTC is compatible with the standard Linux ds1672 RTC driver and thus works with the standard Linux RTC device API.
  • GSC RTC
• Voltage and temperature monitoring can be accomplished using I2C commands.
  • Temp & Voltage Monitor
• GPIO expansion does not require GSC drivers.
  • GSC GPIO
  • Generic GPIO
• Linux input event support will be lost, there is currently no work around for this.
  • GSC Input Driver
• Hardware watchdog, this is where you may run into trouble using GSC, though the CPU watchdog will be adequate in many cases. The issue here will be the inability for the GSC to disable board power.
  • GSC Watchdog
• Field firmware updates (via gsc_update tool) do not depend on the gsc driver.
  • GSC Updates
• GSC Sleep can also use I2C commands in place of the gsc driver.
  • GSC Sleep

What is your EOL or End of Life Policy / Dates

Please see here: End of Life - EOL Dates

Is Bad CRC an error in my boot log?

It is important to realize the meaning of the Warning: Bad CRC, using default environment message. This means that the non-volatile env area is empty or corrupt (Note that this is the way Gateworks Ventana boards ship by default) and that the built-in env within U-Boot will be used.

Can the Gateworks SBC be powered by a battery?

Yes, depending on several variables.

The Gateworks SBCs typically take a 8-60VDC power input. Refer to the user manual of the model being used.

The current required is dependent on wireless radios and other peripherals used, but usually the boards themselves draw anywhere from 2-10 watts.

The capacity of the battery will determine how long the SBC can run. Simple power calculators found online can be used to determine running time.