CPU, VPX
By: dl

The SBC6521 is the first in series of rugged 6U OpenVPX SBCs from Mercury Computer Systems based on Intel Core 2 Duo processors and featuring a multiplane architecture that the company says enables “seamless application scaling with very low-latency, deterministic, high-bandwidth communications. “

The new SBC is based on a 1.8-GHz SL9380 Core 2 Duo CPU and Intel 3100 chipset, plus 2 Gbytes of DDR2 SDRAM with ECC support, 8 Mbytes of BIOS LPC flash, 4 Gbytes of NAND flash, two 1000BASE-BX Ethernet ports, a 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet port, a x4 PCI Express link, two x8 PCI Express links, a pair of XMC/PMC expansion sites, three USB 2.0 interfaces, two SATA interfaces, and an RS-232/RS-422 serial port. Both air- and conduction-cooled versions are available.

www.mc.com/mediacenter/pressrelease.aspx?id=13460

CPU, SMALL FORM FACTORS
By: dl

Standalone SBC dissipates 10W max

Military & Aerospace Electronics reports that General Micro Systems  has bowed a “power stingy” 3.5 x 2.5-inch enclosed SBC targeting “hand-held or body-worn military applications.” Dubbed the Atom XPC40x, it’s based on a 1.6 GHz  Atom microprocessor and up to 2 Gbytes of 533 MHz DDR-2 SDRAM, includes “high performance graphics with 3D acceleration,” and dissipates 10W max.

Interfaces include 100 Mbit Ethernet, five USB 2.0 ports, a RS232/422 serial port, LVDS, eight buffered general-purpose I/O lines and two Express Mini Card sites which can alternatively be populated by a 3 Gbit/s SATA port, Compact Flash slot or 1.8-inch SATA solid state disk. An 8-bit Secure Digital I/O /MMC port for custom I/O, on-board power supplies for single 5 to 12 VDC input, and two x1 PCI Express links are also provided.

The enclosed SBC supports Windows XP/Server 2003/2008, Linux and VxWorks and is available in standard 0°C to +60°C and extended temp -40°C to +85°C versions.

www.militaryaerospace.com/index/display/article-display/6924687379/articles/military-aerospace-electronics/industry-news-flash-2/2010/6/power-stingy-single-board.html

By: dl

Kontron’s latest model in its KISS (Kontron Industrial Silent Server) line of industrial servers, the Model 4U KTC5520 is a “highly robust and long-term available open standard platform” based on an Extended ATX motherboard with one or two Intel Xeon 5500 or 5600 Series microprocessors and up to 48 Gbytes of DDR3 ECC registered SDRAM per processor. It will be available in the U.S. in September.

The server motherboard provides one x16 and one x4 PCI Express link, three x8 PCI Express 2.0 links, and a PCI bus, plus two Gbit Ethernet ports, six USB 2.0 ports, one RS232 serial port, six SATA ports with RAID 0/1/5/10 functionality and a serial digital video interface for DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. Four storage slots are provided.

Kontron says the server, which runs Red Hat Linux or Windows Server 2008, operates reliably under harsh environmental conditions and has an operating temp range of 0° to 50°C. It’s IPMI 2.0 compliant for remote management using IPMI over LAN and it provides an OS-independent, cross-platform interface for monitoring the system temperature, voltage and fan status, among other items. 

emea.kontron.com/about-kontron/news-events/kontron+industrial+silent+server+kiss+4u+ktc5520+brings++latest+dual+intel+xeon+performance++to+extended+environmental+conditions.4010.html

PCI EXPRESS
By: dl

Avnet Electronics Marketing has introduced a reference design combining a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA development board with a 1.1 GHz Atom Z510-based Kontron nanoETXExpress SBC, linked by PCI Express. “By combining the flexibility and customization available through the Xilinx Spartan-6 SP605 FPGA development board, coupled with the ability to capitalize on the numerous applications which run on the Microsoft Windows Embedded Standard OS, designers can now spend more time differentiating their product applications within the Windows environment,” Avnet said.

The reference design also contains a “complete” set of software drivers, an LVDS-DVI video output adapter and a heat spreader.

www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20100615005148&newsLang=en

CPU, VME
By: dl

GE Intelligent Platforms says that its new PowerXtreme PPC9B SBC boosts performance over its predecessor by about 10X without increasing power dissipation. Based on a Freescale QorIQ P2020 dual-core processor and 2 Gbytes of DDR3 ECC memory, the board’s 20 to 25W max power dissipation makes it suitable for applications “where minimal heat dispersion is essential,” the company says, such as sensor fusion and processing, tracking and targeting, weapon guidance and electronic support subsystems. The company attributes the performance boost to the QorIQ P2020’s dual core architecture, faster (1.2 GHz) clock speed, higher degree of silicon integration, faster memory interface and implementation of PCI Express and RapidIO, making it “a compelling upgrade path.”

The PPC9B has both PMC and XMC expansion sites, as well as a proprietary AFIX (Additional Flexible Interface Extension) site. Interfaces include dual Gbit Ethernet, two UART ports, four fast serial COM ports, two USB ports, two SATA ports and 24 GPIO ports, plus a choice of keyboard/mouse ports or two additional USB ports. It’s available in five build levels, with air-cooled versions providing additional Gigabit Ethernet, USB and UART ports via the front panel. Supported OSes include VxWorks, LynxOS and Linux.

www.ge-ip.com/news-events/detail/2778

PACKAGING, MIL/AERO
By: dl

Extreme Engineering Solutions has begun shipping a forced-air-cooled sub-½ ATR enclosure dubbed the Model XPand4200 for conduction-cooled boards in C4ISR vehicular applications in UAVs, helicopters, planes, tanks and light armored vehicles, HMMWVs and UGVs. According to the company, the cooling capability of the air-tight XPand4200 is “significantly higher” than similar enclosures because of a heat exchanger integrated into the top of the unit.

The XPand4200 can be populated with up to six 0.8-inch-pitch 3U VPX, 3U cPCI or power supply boards, with PMC/XMC boards optional. It measures 4.88 (W) x 6.0 (H) x 13.5-inches (D) and weighs 8.8 pounds empty, under 15 pounds when fully populated. It supports Gbit Ethernet, graphics, RS-232/RS-422, MIL-STD-1553 and ARINC 429, plus optional PMC/XMC I/O through D38999 circular connectors, while an optional front-panel USB port provides  monitoring and maintenance capabilities. Power supply options handle up to 200W from a MIL-STD-704 28V DC or 115V AC input.

Said Jeff Porter, Senior Systems Engineer at the company, “Initial customers are very excited because they recognize that the small footprint and volume of the XPand4200, coupled with the increased compute- and I/O-density of our 3U VPX offerings, saves them 50-67% in SWaP over a 6U system.”

pr-canada.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=214603&Itemid=58

By: dl

Bittware has bowed an integrated system framework called the ATLANTiS FrameWork which it says addresses the difficulties of FPGA-based design. “The many benefits of designing with an FPGA: high-speed, reconfigurable I/O, and considerable computational throughput even at low clock rates – also come with limitations,” the company says: “no peripheral infrastructure, no common API, no on-chip processing or control paths, minimal libraries available, and no standard methodology for implementing an FPGA design. These limitations require that most of the design effort be spent on infrastructure and integration, dampening FPGA productivity and severely hampering the designer’s ability to experiment, tweak, and validate their FPGA components.”

ATLANTiS, Bittware says, addresses these issues by providing an infrastructure that supports FPGA development at a higher abstraction level, “promoting the efficient integration of existing application-specific code, as well as code reuse and portability. This allows for improved design exploration and validation, enabling designers to focus on developing their unique processing components rather than the infrastructure around it. The result: efficient FPGA design, lower development costs, and a faster time to market.”

Implemented in an Altera Stratix FPGA, the framework includes “fully-validated and simulatable physical interfaces, I/O, and communications, as well as reconfigurable fabrics and resource management,” according to Jeff Milrod, President and CEO of BittWare. It provides “reconfigurable FPGA components along with the infrastructure necessary to implement, simulate, synthesize, validate, and deploy a complete FPGA architecture.”

www.bittware.com/media/press/pr.cfm?id=54