XMC card brings PCI-Express speed to video

The XMC-G2X is a dual-head graphics XMC mezzanine card ideally suited for avionics and military applications where rendering of several live videos is required.

The XMC-G2X is a dual-head graphics XMC mezzanine card ideally suited for avionics and military applications such as terrain overlay systems, graphic consoles, and where rendering of several live videos is required.

The Thales XMC-G2X is suitable for any x8 PCI-Express XMC compliant single board computer such as the dual Intel Xeon ULV 6U VME SBC, the PENTXM2.

The XMC-2GX benefits from the exceptional graphics performance and low power dissipation of the X.300 graphics controller from the Radeon family of ATI Technologies.

The ATI Radeon X.300 controller supports 2D and 3D acceleration as well as DirectX and OpenGL.

The XMC-2GX mezzanine features dual independent displays through two front connectors, both digital DVI and CRT or dual CRT are offered.

The XMC-2GX interfaces with the single board computer using an x8 PCI-Express link that peaks at 2.5Gbyte/s, about ten times faster than graphic PMC mezzanine products currently available.

This high throughput interface between the host CPU and the graphics controller significantly improves the performance of applications that intensively use bitmap transfers.

For instance an Xbench PutImage 500 x 500 under Linux is measured five times faster using the XMC-2GX and Thales' PENTXM2, when compared with a high performance graphics PMC fitted to a legacy Intel Pentium-M SBC.

"The combination of the XMC-2GX with the PENTXM2 now makes possible the use, in severe environments, of high-throughput graphics applications that until now, were confined to climate controlled environments".

"This pairs' ability to runs up to six concurrent live videos on the same screen without loading the CPU has raised a lot of interest amongst field deployable surveillance consoles designers", said Joseph Eicher, Thales Computers' Director of Global Field Application Engineering.

The XMC-2GX is already sampling today and will be available in volume early in April 2007.

The XMC-2GX is covered by Thales Computers' long term support programme.

This offer also brings built-to-print capability to designs based on the board, thanks to a guaranteed multiyear supply of the product beyond its active life, a unique offering from Thales for Intel and PowerPC processor-based products.

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