PMC Uses Virtex 5 FPGA for Speedy I/O Processing

At one time FPGAs served merely as glue logic interfaces. Now they function as complete processing engines. Acromag’s PMC-VFX modules feature a Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA with a hard core PowerPC block that is reconfigurable for high-performance I/O processing and user-developed computing applications. Now users can offload CPU-intensive operations such as video/3D data processing or floating-point math for superior system performance. For fast data transfer in and out of the FPGA, the PMC-VFX provides large banks of DDR2 DRAM and dual-port SRAM for high-speed DMA transfer to the PCI bus. The PMC base card provides 64 I/O channels or 32 LVDS lines accessible via P4 rear connectors. Inserting optional front-connecting AXM I/O extension modules augments I/O processing capabilities with an efficient interface for 16-bit 105 MHz A/D conversion, CMOS digital I/O, RS-485 differential signals, or extra LVDS I/O lines. Typical uses include processing of video, 3D data, radar/sonar, software-defined radio, electronic warfare, floating-point math and fuzzy logic algorithms.

A high-throughput PCI-X interface ensures plenty of bandwidth to rapidly move data. An assortment of plug-in I/O extension modules offers great flexibility to interface various analog and digital I/O signal types. By streamlining the design and limiting the features to core functions needed for fast and easy implementation, Acromag makes FPGA-based computing accessible to many more applications. Boards start at $4,950 with extended temperature (-40° to 85°C) and conduction-cooled models available.

Acromag
Wixom, MI.
(248) 295-0310.
[www.acromag.com].

FPGAs Enable 24 Serial FPDP Channels

Using FPGAs in conjunction with the Serial FPDP (sFPDP) interconnect makes for a powerful combination. Such a solution has enormous benefits for radar, sonar, SIGINT, ELINT, digital signal processing, FFTs, communications, software radio, encryption, image processing, prototyping, text processing and other processing-intensive applications. Serving exactly that arena, Annapolis Micro Systems offers its FPGA-based WILDSTAR family that provides 24 sFPDP channels per VME slot. The Annapolis sFPDP Cards (UNI3 or UNI6) come with an easy-to-use Serial FPDP interface supporting up to 12 lanes of 2.5 Gbit Full Duplex data. Three frame types are supported: Normal Data Fiber Frame, Sync without Data Fiber Frame and Sync with Data Fiber Frame in Point-to-Point Mode. The card has three individually configurable, industry-standard 4X connectors, providing 4 lanes per connector, with dedicated signal conditioners to ensure clean communication. It supports up to 7.5 Gbytes/s full duplex per I/O card and a wide variety of readily available copper and fiber cables.

Up to two serial I/O cards and two LVDS I/O cards can reside on each WILDSTAR 4 or WILDSTAR 5 VME/VXS main board, with half that number for the PCIX or PCIe. The sFPDP card (UNI6) also supports Rocket I/O protocol at up to 75 Gbit full duplex per I/O card, three ports of 10G full duplex InfiniBand per I/O card or 10G full duplex Ethernet per I/O Card. No other FPGA board vendor can match the volume of data we can send straight into the heart of the processing elements and then straight back out again. WILDSTAR 4 for PCI boards starts at about $13,500 and UNI6 I/O Mezzanines start at about $4,500.

Annapolis Micro Systems Inc
Annapolis, MD.
(410) 841-2514.
[www.annapmicro.com].

Advanced MC Card Sports Altera Stratix IV GX FPGA

The AMC mezzanine form factor is destined to have a bright future in military applications, particularly when used as slot card modules in a MicroTCA system. BittWare’s S4-AMC (S4AM) uses the Altera Stratix IV GX FPGA to blend performance and flexibility. The S4AM can be populated with multiple densities of the Stratix IV GX FPGA, from 230K to 530K logic elements (LEs). At the heart of the S4AM is the state-of-the-art Altera Stratix IV GX FPGA which provides up to 530K equivalent LEs, 20 Mbits of RAM and 1,024 embedded multipliers in addition to up to 27 full-duplex, multi-gigabit transceivers. Twenty-four of those transceivers are capable of supporting PCI Express Rev 2.0 and Serial RapidIO Rev 2.0.