Product category:
Embedded Computing and Control
News Release from: RadiSys Corporation | Subject: Procelerant CE
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 25 February 2005
Embedded family takes a modular approach
The Radisys Procelerant CE is the first in a family of products based on COM Express, the new PICMG standard for PCI Express in computers-on-modules (COMs).
The Radisys Procelerant CE is the first in a family of products based on COM Express, the new PICMG standard for PCI Express in computers-on-modules (COMs) The Procelerant CE consists of a carrier board and four COM modules and is one of the industry's first off-the-shelf, COM Express-compliant, ultra-small-form-factor computing systems
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 16 Feb 2006 at 8.00am (UK)
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The Procelerant CE was designed for use in a medical, test and measurement and industrial control applications.
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Additionally, the embedded processor module market is fragmented with many custom solutions and lacks universally accepted standards.
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Meeting time-to-market demands, maintaining development costs and managing supply chains in this environment is a huge challenge.
Incorporating Procelerant CE into their designs and relying on Radisys to manage supply chain functions, customers can design better products faster and more economically.
"Radisys designed the Procelerant CE to help OEMs lower product lifecycle costs and respond to market changes faster".
"This is made possible by offering a scalable, interchangeable platform equipped with the latest processor, chipset and memory features", said Wade Clowes, General Manager, Commercial Segment, at Radisys.
"By incorporating the Procelerant CE into their designs OEMs no longer need to search for the right board with the right features".
"They can reuse the architecture across several products resulting in a reduction in the number of processor boards needed to create an entire product line".
The Procelerant CE is made up of standard multiple COMs and a carrier development board.
Customers can choose the appropriate COM (based on Intel Pentium-M, Intel Celeron-M processors and Intel 915GM chipset) depending on their processing needs.
Incorporating the Procelerant CE into designs allows design teams to optimise development budgets and increase productivity by using a common architecture across several product lines.
Organisations can also accelerate their design process by developing software on the COM and carrier, while designing the rest of their system in parallel.
Once in the field, application performance upgrades can be made by simply upgrading the COM.
Procelerant CE gives organisations configuration flexibility and provides a smooth migration path from legacy to new technology as necessary.
For example, the module provides key legacy and new technology interfaces that enable migration from PCI to PCI Express, IDE to SATA, or 10/100Mbit/s to gigabit Ethernet all using the same module.
This gives customers the flexibility to upgrade and refresh different product lines with new interface technologies at different rates all while using a common COM.
The ability to easily configure different price/performance points with the range of COM modules provides further flexibility to build a range of product models all from the same family of standard COMs.
Unlike single processor boards, Procelerant CE allows users to easily change configurations as applications and processors evolve.
Additionally, software becomes portable and can be used from module to module and application to application.
This commonality and flexibility across product lines allows OEMs to experience faster design cycles and respond to customer demands quicker.
In addition to announcing the Procelerant family of COM Express-compliant products, the company is expanding its Radisys Alliance Programme (RAP) to include OEM partners.
Through RAP, Radisys collaborates with industry leaders to ensure customers developing next generation medical, test and measurement and industrial control applications have ready access to quick design alternatives that help them meet time-to-market requirements and optimise their design budgets.
The Procelerant CE consists of four COM Express modules and a carrier card.
The module is 90 x 125mm in size and is based on the Intel Pentium-M processor and Intel 915GM chipset.
The CE760, CE738, CE370 and CE373 COMs are based on the respective Intel processors, the 2.0GHz Intel Pentium-M 760, the 1.4GHz Intel Pentium-M 738, the 1.5GHz Intel Celeron-M 370, and the 1.0GHz ULV Intel Celeron -M 373.
The modules feature up to 1Gbyte DDR2 DRAM and include dual display (analogue VGA, LVDS and SDVO interface), AC97/Azalia audio interface, gigabit Ethernet, PCI Express and PCI support.
The carrier board is a FlexATX form factor featuring x16 PCI Express, or dual DVI and SVGA capability.
The board also includes a x1 PCI Express slot and PCI Express Mini Card slot, two PCI slots, LVDS display, four SATA interfaces, IDE interface, GPIO header, quad USB connection capability, gigabit Ethernet, I2C EEPROM, RS232 header and AC97 jacks.
The Radisys Procelerant CE will be available in July 2005.
Pricing starts at $489 in small quantities.
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