Product category:
VMEbus Boards and Assemblies
News Release from: Thales Computers | Subject: VCE405 Connectivity Engine
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 29 April 2005
More power for VMEbus connectivity
engine
Thales Computers has released a 400MHz version of its VCE405 Connectivity Engine that draws as little as 7W of power.
Thales Computers has released a 400MHz version of its VCE405 Connectivity Engine that draws as little as 7W of power This represents a 50% gain in performance with the same power dissipation as its 266MHz predecessor
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 10 Nov 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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The VMPC6d is a powerful new dual/single PowerPC single board computer from Thales Computers.
This 6U VCE405 is a versatile off-the-shelf CPU with two PMC slots for maximum I/O flexibility.
It offers a PowerPC solution where high computing power and low power consumption and dissipation are a concern.
Because of the board's low power consumption, it does not require massive heatsinks, making it ideal for applications such as flight control systems on helicopters, where a weight restriction exists for rugged electronic components.
Further reading
Compact VME rack takes to the air
The RA2064x airborne VME rack is a compact off-the-shelf solution for avionics applications, meets the RTCA/DO-160D standard for avionic equipment and is suitable for use in a pressurised cabin.
Airborne rack accommodates 6U VME64x boards
The 3/4ATR-WA-M28 airborne rack is an off-the-shelf enclosure ideal for airborne, ship and ground mobile systems, as well as other harsh environment applications.
Extended-temperature SBC for air-traffic control
Harris Corp has selected Thales Computers' extended-temperature CPU860 multiprotocol processor board for use in the Harris/SITA second-generation VHF remote ground station.
The VCE405 board consumes so little power that it is able to be cooled by natural convection in an 85C environment.
Medical equipment applications also benefit from the VCE405's low power requirement, especially in applications where it is critical to sustain temperatures without the benefit of a cooling fan, such as X-ray systems and blood analysis machines.
In addition to aerospace and medical applications, the VCE405 VMEbus solution is a competitively priced option for industrial, automotive systems and light transportation It is already used in volume as a computing device in automatic trains and a network bridge on amphibious ships.
Peripheral integration of the 405GP and dual 64bit PCIbus (PMC) expansion slots make the device ideal for wired communications and other pervasive computing applications.
Thales' 400MHz VCE405 Connectivity Engine is based on IBM/AMCC low power consumption PowerPC 405GPr.
The PPC405GPr is powered by a PowerPC 405B3 embedded core which tightly couples a 400MHz CPU, MMU, instruction and data caches (each 16Kbyte) and debug logic.
This finely tuned core reduces data transfer overhead and minimises pipeline stalls to greatly improve performance.
The general architecture of the 405GPr consists of a 64bit, 133MHz processor local bus (PLB) and a 32bit, 44.33MHz on-chip peripheral bus (OPB).
The VME64 is managed by the ALMA2e, the latest release of the highly integrated, low power single chip designed in collaboration with IBM.
The VCE405's real-time clock (RTC) function is provided by a Dallas Semiconductor DS1602 elapsed time counter.
This device can keep track of over 125 years worth of seconds in each of its two 32bit counters.
The local memory of the card consists of 128Mbyte of synchronous DRAM and 8Mbyte of Flash memory.
The VCE405 provides 100Base-TX Ethernet with auto-negotiation to 10Base-T when connected to networks not capable of 100Mbit/s operation.
The Ethernet media access controller of the PPC405GP is a generic implementation of the Ethernet media access controller (MAC) protocol complying with ANSI/IEEE802.3 and IEEE802.3u supplement.
The Connectivity Engine provides a total of six serial lines.
Two asynchronous EIA232 lines are supplied by the PPC405GP itself.
Two enhanced serial communications controllers (ESCCs) from Zilog provide four additional EIA232/422/485 configurable serial lines - two synchronous/asynchronous serial lines and two asynchronous serial lines.
The board design provides two PMC sites; both sites can support a 64bit PCIbus.
Should additional features be required, Thales Computers provides an extensive choice of COTS PMCs for commercial grade or harsh environment applications: networking (Ethernet, ATM), additional serial lines, parallel I/O, graphics etc.
The VCE405 supports VxWorks release 5.5 for Tornado 2.2 and release 5.4 for Tornado 2.0.
The LynxOS 4.0 and BlueCat Linux 4.0, already available on the 266MHz version of the VCE405 are scheduled to be available on the 400MHz version during 2005.
The VCE405 Connectivity Engine from Thales Computers is available starting at a list price of $2360 one-off.
A rugged conduction-cooled version and a rugged air-cooled version are also available.
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