Entry-level cPCI board supports packet switching

The PP CP2/P3x is the latest addition to the popular entry-level CompactPCI system slot controller family from Concurrent Technologies.

The PP CP2/P3x is the latest addition to the popular entry-level CompactPCI system slot controller family from Concurrent Technologies.

This single-slot board supports PICMG2.16 (packet switching backplane), an ideal introduction to switched fabric applications, along with PICMG 2.9 IPMI system management.

As a system controller, the PP CP2/P3x supports the PICMG 2.1 hot swap specification and can also be used in satellite mode (stand-alone mode) for applications not requiring the CompactPCI backplane bus.

Featuring a 1GHz or 850MHz Pentium III processor, the PP CP2/P3x is ideal for a variety of applications including those requiring long life availability, configuration control, and high reliability.

Current market applications include telecommunications, defence and medical.

At the core of the design is the Intel 850 MHz Pentium III, which supports 100MHz bus, and 256Kbyte of high-speed secondary cache.

For increased reliability, as with all Concurrent Technologies' designs, heatsinks are used in preference to fans for cooling the CPU.

The board provides a minimum of 256Mbyte of ECC SDRAM that can easily be upgraded to 512Mbyte using standard off-the-shelf DRAM modules.

EIDE is supported and an optional onboard 2.5in disk drive is available within a single slot.

Alternatively, one or two CompactFlash or MicroDrive modules can be installed.

In addition, 8Mbyte of application Flash memory is provided.

Two fast Ethernet channels are provided using Intel 82599ER devices where each channel supports 10Base-T and 100 Base-TX.

Each channel can be individually switched between the front panel RJ45 connectors and rear connectors.

Support is also provided for PICMG 2.16 packet switching backplane.

Two RS232 serial channels are provided, together with a graphics interface with AGP support using the Silicon Motion SM722 graphics controller.

Other interfaces include keyboard and mouse interface, PC real-time clock, two USB interfaces, parallel printer, watchdog timer, system fan monitor and speaker interface.

The board's features can be further customised to suit the user's application by the addition of a PMC module.

An optional transition module is also available.

For ease of integration, the PP CP2/P3x supports many of today's leading operating systems, including VxWorks, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP Embedded and Linux.

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