Upgraded VME board has more power and peripherals

Due to strong demand for the industry's first onboard, one-slot Fibre Channel VME board, Pentek now offers additional I/O, memory and real-time processing options.

Due to strong demand for the industry's first onboard, one-slot Fibre Channel VME board, Pentek now offers additional I/O, memory and real-time processing options.

Optimised for high-performance embedded applications such as wideband data acquisition and software radio, the Model 4205 excels in processing, analysing, recording and synthesising tasks for a wide range of signals.

The board features a 1GHz Motorola MPC7457 G4 PowerPC processor and two programmable Xilinx Virtex-II FPGAs.

The Model 4205 offers a one-slot solution with two VIM-2 (Velocity Interface Mezzanine) modules, one VIM-4 module, or one VIM-2 and one PMC (PCI Mezzanine Card) module.

In addition to its flexible mezzanine I/O capabilities, the Model 4205 supports numerous interface options including single or dual RACE++, Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel and other future high-speed serial interfaces such as Serial FPDP (front panel data port).

Any of these interfaces can be included without exceeding the one-slot configuration.

As an attractive alternative to costly commercial real-time operating systems, the recently ported eCos royalty-free RTOS delivers excellent real time performance plus open source code.

"By teaming the new 1GHz PowerPC with two user-configurable FPGAs, our Model 4205 efficiently handles even the toughest digital signal processing and data transfer tasks at a very modest cost", stated Rodger Hosking, Vice President of Pentek.

"The new Gigabit Ethernet option boosts network data transfers by a factor of ten, and the new 1Gbyte memory option doubles the data delay and buffering capacities, critical for many real-time applications like radar.

For these reasons, we chose the Model 4205 as the enabling technology for the Pentek RTS 2501 radar recording development platform".

In addition to the standard 10/100 Ethernet and RS232 front panel ports, the new optional Gigabit Ethernet port allows a direct connection to high-end workstations, system peripherals and other single-board single board computers.

Developers can now take advantage of Gigabit Ethernet to move high-speed data as a popular alternative to RACEway or Fibre Channel.

The new 1Gbyte SDRAM option improves data buffering by capturing large blocks of high-speed data from the wideband peripherals like A/D convertors prior to processing or recording.

It can also be useful as a large continuous digital delay memory for tracking receiver applications.

Here, a circular buffer stores data while it is being inspected to determine if data should be discarded or forwarded for storage or analysis.

Two Virtex-II XC2V3000 3 million gate FPGAs are strategically located in the I/O data path to facilitate real time DSP tasks.

Pentek's GateFlow FPGA resources include the GateFlow FPGA design kit supporting customer-developed FPGA algorithms; the GateFlow IP core library for high-performance FFTs, digital receivers and radar pulse compression algorithms; and GateFlow factory installed IP cores so customers can take immediate advantage of FPGA technology with zero FPGA development effort.

Pentek's ReadyFlow supports VIM and PMC mezzanine modules with high-level C-callable libraries for easy control of board-specific functions.

In addition, ReadyFlow for the PowerPC includes a complete distribution of eCos, an open source, royalty-free RTOS intended for embedded applications.

eCos-based applications can be developed with the included GNU development tools.

Pentek eCos drivers are designed to reduce development time not only during the initial stages of software development, but also when new I/O hardware is added to the system.

Each driver is designed to control the specific hardware features of the I/O interface being used.

This greatly shortens the application development learning curve when a system is modified or expanded.

Pentek VxWorks board support package and drivers provide software developers with a complete library of hardware initialisation, control and application functions.

Used in conjunction with Wind River's Tornado II software development environment, the package speeds application development.

The Model 4205 is immediately available (6-8 weeks ARO) with pricing starting at US $7995.

The Model 4999 ReadyFlow BSP and drivers with eCos are immediately available for the Model 4205 starting at $1000, with a one-year subscription available for $2500.

Model 4996 VxWorks BSP and Drivers start at $2000, with a one-year subscription available for $4000 .

To simplify the design process, Pentek's GateFlow IP core libraries are offered under the standardised SignOnce IP project licence, the industry's first multivendor common licence for FPGA-based IP.

The GateFlow FFT and digital receiver IP cores are immediately available starting at US $8995.

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