PowerPC G4 computing node adopts rugged guise

Thales has unveiled a ruggedised conduction-cooled version of the PowerNode3, a single/dual 1GHz PowerPC G4 high-end computing node featuring enhanced connectivity and reduced power consumption.

Thales has unveiled its fully ruggedised, conduction-cooled version of the PowerNode3, a single/dual 1GHz PowerPC G4 high-end computing node featuring enhanced connectivity and reduced power consumption.

The ruggedised PowerNode3 RC version is designed for mission-critical COTS applications requiring exceptional real-time data and signal processing.

This SBC is ideally suited for demanding applications such as radar, sonar, medical imaging and machine vision systems.

The new PowerNode3 RC offers COTS system integrators a unique combination of low power (30W for dual CPU configuration versus 60W for competitive boards) thanks to the improved G4/7457 performance-to-power ratio, high MTBF from the board's shared memory architecture requiring fewer components with a single memory host bridge, and available VME 2eSST functionality.

Also, because the RC version is functionally equivalent to its air-cooled counterpart, development work can begin on a lower cost board.

The new PowerNode3 RC features dual or single Motorola PowerPC G4 7457 processors running at 1GHz, each equipped with a 2Mbyte L3 cache and 2Mbyte private SRAM, linked via a 133MHz Avignon host bridge.

Up to 1Gbyte onboard SDRAM is accessible at the local bus speed of 133MHz.

The board provides two PCI Mezzanine Card (PMC) slots (one 64bit 66MHz and one 32bit 33/43MHz).

The PowerNode3 RC is designed for enhanced connectivity, with an ALMA2e VME-PCI bridge that enables 2eSST data transfers at up to 180Mbyte/s for VME board interconnection.

Dual gigabit Ethernet interfaces and four asynchronous EIA232/422/485 lines provide a range of high-speed networking and connection options.

In addition, three differential 4x high-speed links are routed to the P0 backplane (as per PICMG 2.17), enabling the PowerNode3 CPU board to be interconnected to fabric technologies based on the LVDS standard.

Thales is also providing support for Linux with symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) on all PowerNode3 products.

The release also supports the VSIPL Scientific Subroutine Library for DSP and array processing, with AltiVec support.

Said Alain Albarello, General Manager of Thales' computers activities: "We are very proud to be able to offer this functionality to application developers".

"Our end users can now get the full benefit of parallel processing under the Linux operating system, along with the DSP capabilities of the G4 processor with AltiVec".

"With the MPI VSIPL Scientific Subroutine Library, users can now build a very powerful, multiprocessing signal processing system, at a reasonable cost".

By using a single copy of the operating system, shared memory and shared I/O resources, Linux SMP lets multiple processors work in parallel.

The operating system dynamically balances the system processing load among all the processors on the SBC.

The PowerNode3 is now available in all versions and temperature ranges.

Pricing for the new ruggedised PowerNode3 RC starts at $11,490.

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