Small mezzanine card packs in bandwidth

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Feb 26, 2008

The AMC-6487C includes three software programmable TCI6487 DSPs, each containing three high-performance C64x+ cores running at 1GHz as well as 3Mbyte of on-chip memory.

CommAgility has released the AMC-6487C, an advanced mezzanine card that offers unprecedented signal processing performance and bandwidth in a highly compact package.

It is the first single-width, full-height AdvancedMC card to be based on Texas Instruments (TI) multicore TMS320TCI6487 digital signal processor (DSP).

It is designed to give OEMs the performance and I/O connectivity required for wireless baseband and other processing-intensive applications such as WiMAX and long-term Evolution of 3GPP (LTE).

The AMC-6487C includes three software programmable TCI6487 DSPs, each containing three high-performance C64x+ cores running at 1GHz as well as 3Mbyte of on-chip memory.

The multicore DSP provides significantly more effective performance than TI's single core TMS320C6455 device and also affords a myriad of high-speed peripherals including Gigabit Ethernet, DDR2, antenna interface links (OBSAI/CPRI) and two Serial RapidIO (SRIO) interfaces.

The AMC-6487C board also includes a complementary, customer-programmable, Xilinx Virtex-4 FX100 FPGA for additional parallel processing.

The combination of DSPs and FPGA on the board allows an application to be balanced and optimised for the most effective use of system resources.

The AMC-6487C includes a front panel interface to three full rate CPRI or OBSAI antenna links plus a configurable clock/sync interface supporting OBSAI RP1, thus providing industry-standard links to wireless remote radio heads.

It incorporates a Tundra Tsi578 SRIO switch for a full low-latency, high-bandwidth SRIO infrastructure between processing elements and multiple 10Gbit/s external connections, two to the AMC backplane and one to the front panel.

A Broadcom BCM5389 supports multiple Gigabit Ethernet links on and off-card.

The module can provide the baseband processing required for a three-sector WiMAX basestation, which can connect up to 100 small businesses or over 500 households to the internet.

The board's MIMO 2 x transmit and 2 x receiver support improves the link bandwidth and quality of service.