VME boards gain further 2eSST support

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Nov 18, 2003

Thales Computers now provides support for 2eSST transfers on VME systems running under LynxOS.

Thales Computers now provides support for 2eSST transfers on VME systems running under LynxOS.

Thales reckons it is the first company to provide board-level support for 2eSST capability under LynxOS.

Thales Computers has incorporated support for 2eSST transfers into two software packages: the PowerLine LynxOS board support package (BSP) for single board computers (SBCs) and the PowerLine LynxOS multinode package for large PowerPC systems using SBCs and computing nodes.

The PowerLine software series is a set of tools designed to handle platform management requirements, reducing development time for complex VME systems used in signal processing and other high-end applications.

Robert Morris, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for LynuxWorks, said: "As more companies in the VME market incorporate 2eSST technology into their systems, software support for this technology becomes more critical.

Thales Computers' support of LynxOS gives our customers better performance and quicker configuration, so they can easily implement 2eSST technology in their systems".

Robert Negre, VP of Engineering for Thales Computers, said: "The performance of 2eSST VME, now an accepted VITA standard, and its support with real-time operating systems, enables our clients to eliminate costly dedicated mezzanine and fabric.

This greatly improves cost and mean time between failure figures - two key issues in the defence and aerospace markets".

2eSST (for two-edge synchronous source transfer) is a bus protocol, introduced in 1997 by Arizona Digital as part of a proposed VME320 standard that provides VME-based systems with theoretical bandwidth of up to 320Mbyte/s (compared with 40Mbyte/s for VME64).

The vastly expanded bandwidth provided by 2eSST is an important element in Motorola's "VME Renaissance", an initiative to extend the capabilities of VME to meet bandwidth requirements of new and future applications.

The three Thales Computers high-performance boards currently featuring 2eSST include the PowerNode3, a high-end computing node based on single and dual Motorola PowerPC G4 7457 processors running at 1GHz; the PowerEngine7, a single board computer based on single or dual IBM PowerPC 750FX processors; and the V4G4c computing node, which features four Motorola PowerPC 7410 (G4) processors with AltiVec vector processing units.

For each board, 2eSST capability is provided by the ALMA2e VME-PCI bridge designed by Thales Computers and manufactured by IBM France.

The two boards come in ruggedisation levels from benign to mission critical.