Fibre interconnect board offers extended networks

The SMT145 is a fully configurable entry-level fibre interconnect signal carrier board that addresses OEM requirements for high communications throughput extended networking.

The SMT145 is a fully configurable entry-level fibre interconnect signal carrier board that addresses OEM requirements for high communications throughput extended networking.

With its addon module and interface architecture compatible with Sundance's family of signal processing and FPGA-based systems, the SMT145 can handle high-speed datastreams through its fibre interface or its InfiniBand architecture.

This PCI and PCI Express-based carrier system is managed by a powerful Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA that integrates an IBM 400MHz PowerPC processor, and provides the ideal environment of additional hardware implemented intellectual property (IP) cores.

These include the PCI interface, as well as end user defined IP cores that can process data according to the application requirements.

With its reconfigurable FPGA interconnections and interfaces, the SMT145 is a versatile carrier system that can be networked to any of Sundance's large family of DSP and FPGA-based signal processing systems.

"This high speed reconfigurable carrier system is integral to the roll-out of our latest data conversion and communication systems technology", said Flemming Christensen Managing Director of Sundance.

"It opens up more opportunities and markets as communications OEMs are under intense pressure to not only keep cost down, but also support an ever-expanding number of communication interface technologies".

The core of the SMT145 is a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA that controls, processes, and manages datastreams.

The FPGA interfaces directly to a fibre transceiver through a serdes device that sits between the FPGA and the transceiver, providing a high throughput of up to 2Gbit/s with 8b/10b codec.

In addition, OEMs can leverage the SMT145 InfiniBand architecture through the Xilinx RocketIO multigigabit transceivers.

An 8Mbyte synchronous static 100/133MHz SRAM bank is interfaced to the Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA via a 32bit databus, and provides a memory bandwidth of over 2Gbyte/s.

"Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA technology can be of tremendous benefit for high performance digital acquisition and communication systems like Sundance", said Tim Erjavec, Senior Manager of Programmable Systems Marketing at Xilinx.

"We understand that companies like Sundance need to get to market as quickly as possible with the latest FPGA technologies, and working with us allows them to meet their time to market objectives, and keep their focus on their customers' high performance signal processing application requirements".

The SMT145 can also be networked to other Sundance DSP and FPGA-based systems, or to the company's data acquisition and conversion modules through an onboard Sundance high-speed bus (SHB).

In addition, the SMT45 provides connectors for an addon daughter module that can transform this carrier board into a fully integrated digital signal processing system.

The PCI interface is provided by a PCI core within the FPGA.

This 64bit PCI device runs up to 66MHz and allows transfer rates of 533Mbyte/s.

Optionally, a PCI Express module can be used.

Pricing for the SMT145 starts at US $1485; evaluation units and volume pricing are also available.

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