High-resolution graphics for harsh environments

Aitech Defense Systems' dual-head graphics PMC enables the simultaneous display of two independent streams of high-resolution graphics and can be used in harsh environments.

Aitech Defense Systems has brought out a dual-head graphics PMC (PCI Mezzanine Card) that enables the simultaneous display of two independent streams of high-resolution graphics and can be used in harsh environments.

The new M591 uses the advanced ATI M9 graphics processor with high-performance processing capabilities for both 2D and 3D polygon generation and texture-mapping acceleration.

The M591 PMC unifies video operations in multiple execution pipelines from different sources with two independent VGA cores and RAMDACs to allow more flexible data handling and to prevent data bottleneck overloads on specific internal data pathways.

The dual DVI outputs of the M591 are capable of independent resolutions up to 1600 x 1200pixel at 75Hz with 32bit/pixel and can reach 2048 x 1536pixel at 85Hz with data rates up to 122Mpixel/s.

TV output supports NTSC, PAL, RS170A and CCIR formats in addition to S-video (Y/C) signal formats, both interlaced and non-interlaced.

To minimise inherently unreliable cabling detrimental to high reliability applications, video DVI and TV outputs are routed through the PMC's P4 connector to accommodate rear panel I/O for the conduction-cooled PMC version.

For the air-cooled version, the video I/O is routed via the PMC front panel, which has connectors for each of these signals.

The board's on-chip, 64Mbyte DDR frame buffer operates at 200MHz and its software drivers package supports all onboard capabilities such as OpenGL, which includes Integrity and VxWorks RTOS support, as well as standard VGA and X11.

The M591 comes in three ruggedisation levels: commercial, rugged and military, including an air-cooled version per IEEE 1386-2001 and a conduction-cooled version per ANSI/VITA 20-2001.

Pricing for the M591 starts at $2,995.

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