Product category:
VMEbus Boards and Assemblies
News Release from: Vmetro | Subject: HPE640 and the HPE720
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 07 May 2008
Hybrid processors combine PowerPCs with
FPGAs
6U boards provide high-performance digital signal processing capabilities for a wide range of demanding intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance applications.
Vmetro has developed two new 6U VPX/REDI hybrid processing engines (HPEs) that combine Freescale Power Architecture MPC8641D dual-core PowerPC processors for general purpose processing with Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs in a single slot Both the HPE640 and the HPE720, available in air-cooled and conduction-cooled versions, integrate the PowerPC processors with the Virtex-5 FPGAs, front-panel I/O, and VPX backplane connectivity
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 23 Jul 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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The HPE640 is well suited for applications that stream data from sensors to FPGAs over low overhead, point-to-point protocols like Aurora or Serial FPDP.
It can also be integrated with Vmetro's proven VXS products through the use of a hybrid backplane.
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The HPE640 integrates two MPC8641D PowerPC processors with a choice of two DSP-optimised Virtex-5 SX95T devices and LX155T devices optimised for high-performance logic and low-power serial connectivity.
Each of the two MPC8641D processors has 2Gbyte of DDR2 SDRAM.
Each FPGA has six directly connected banks of memory to maximise performance; 36Mbyte (18bit wide) of QDR2 SRAM across four banks and 256Mbyte (16bit wide) of DDR2 SDRAM across two banks.
Front panel I/O is provided by an FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC/VITA 57) site connected to one of the Virtex-5 FPGAs.
High-speed PCI Express links can be utilised for efficient data movement between the two MPC8641D processors as well as between the Virtex-5 FPGAs and the PowerPC processors.
In addition, an onboard PCI Express switch supports high-throughput data movement to and from the board via the VPX backplane.
An onboard Gigabit Ethernet switch provides Gigabit Ethernet links to each processor as well as four Gigabit Ethernet links to the backplane.
With an onboard Serial RapidIO (sRIO) switch and four x4 sRIO links to the backplane, the HPE720 supports a distributed switching system architecture that is well suited to distributed multiprocessing (DMP) applications.
For high performance DMP systems, full mesh architectures can be implemented with HPE720 and the previously announced MPE730 without needing to have a dedicated switch card in the system.
The HPE720 integrates a single MPC8641D PowerPC processor with two Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs.
The FPGA sites can be fitted with the largest Virtex-5 FPGAs available for the most demanding DSP applications, specifically the Virtex-5 LX110T, LX220T, LX330T, SX240T, and FX200T devices.
The MPC8641D PowerPC processors supports 2Gbyte of DDR2 SDRAM.
The FPGAs have 36Mbyte (36bit wide) of QDR2 SRAM across four banks and 512Mbyte (32bit wide) of DDR2 SDRAM across two banks.
The HPE720 provides flexible front panel I/O with support for either two FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC/VITA 57) sites connected to the FPGAs or one FMC site and one XMC/PMC site.
The XMC/PMC site supports PCI-X, PCI Express, and Serial RapidIO options.
The onboard RapidIO switch interconnects the MPC8641D processor, the FPGAs and the XMC site to the VPX backplane.
"Our new hybrid processor boards provide customers with flexibility when designing their VPX-based systems", comments Thomas Nygaard, Chief Technology Officer of Vmetro.
"The power and flexibility that come from combining these products with our other VPX products, like the FPE650 quad-FPGA board and the MPE730 quad-processor board, enable system architects to combine a mix of products to implement their unique system architecture".
VxWorks and Linux support are provided for the HPE640 and HPE720 boards.
To aid developers, a Software and HDL development suite is provided, including FPGA IP blocks such as DMA and memory controllers, a powerful software API for access to FPGA features, and sophisticated examples and utilities for FPGA configuration and development.
All library functions are designed to leave a small logic footprint in the FPGAs so that the majority of the resources on all the FPGAs are available for user applications.
Vmetro's new interprocessor communication software for distributed multiprocessing systems, FusionIPC, is supported on the HPE720, SBC731 and MPE730. Request a free brochure from Vmetro ...
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