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Transcription

Industry Specs:
Going Beyond
“Five Nines”
The magazine of record for the embedded computing industry
August 2007
www.rtcmagazine.com
Mezzanines
make
Comm systems
RISC Grabs
More Tasks
for DSP
Management
Firmware Does
FLASHy
Upgrades
FAST&
FLEXIBLE
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An RTC Group Publication
GE Fanuc
Embedded Systems
Wouldn’t you rather have two?
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© 2007 GE Fanuc Embedded Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
TABLEOF CONTENTS
AUGUST 2007
Departments
5 Editorial
The World Is Bigger than We Think
Insider
7 Industry
Latest developments in the
Embedded Marketplace
& Technology
42 Products
Newest Embedded Technology
used by Industry Leaders
Technology in Context
Mezzanines in Communication
Board Strategies
10 Mezzanine
for Communications
Rodger H. Hosking, Pentek
Enable
16 Mezzanines
Next-Generation
Communication Design
Stuart Jamieson, Emerson Network Power
Mezzanines Make Comm Systems
Fast & Flexible
SOLUTIONS ENGINEERING
High Availability
SCOPE Alliance Carrier
24 The
Grade Base Platform
Middleware
Paul Steinberg and Tapio Tallgren, SCOPE
Alliance
Specifications from
28 Latest
SA Forum Enhance
Middleware Services
Asif Naseem, Service Availability Forum
FEATURED PRODUCTS
10
Mezzanine Board Strategies for Communications
30
6U VPX GbE Multilayer Switch/Router Packs Dense
Networking, Security and Management
10-Gigabit ATCA Portfolio
30 Triple
Targets Triple Play IPTV-Based
Broadband
VPX GbE Multilayer Switch/
31 6URouter
Packs Dense Networking,
Security and Management
INDUSTRY INSIGHT
DSP
32 SoftDSP Migrates Toward DSP
Ilan D. Shallom, AudioCodes
44
Handheld Terminals Support Bar Code and RFID for a Seamless
Logistics Solution
49
USB-Based Sensors Provide Simpler Power
Measurements without a Power Meter
SOFTWARE AND
DEVELOPMENT TOOLS
Fault Management
Firmware
36 Interoperable
Upgrades for PICMG
Management Controllers
Mark Overgaard, Pigeon Point Systems
Digital Subscriptions Available at www.rtcgroup.com
August 2007
August 2007
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August 2007
embeddedcommad_14v.indd 1
Published by The RTC Group
Copyright 2007, The RTC Group. Printed in the United States. All rights reserved.
All related graphics are trademarks of The RTC Group. All other brand and product
names are the property of their holders.
11/13/06 5:55:59 PM
august 2007
EDITORIAL
The World Is Bigger
than We Think
by Tom Williams, Editor-in-Chief
I
am told by those who claim to monitor these things that this is
the year that the number of machines communicating autonomously or semi-autonomously on the Internet has exceeded
the number of humans communicating on the Internet. Now, of
course, this includes such things as banks and financial institutions updating data all over the world, as well as military systems
doing whatever arcane things they do and other automated commercial data exchanges But it also includes a truly vast number
of embedded and automated devices sending control and status
information to each other and to systems that are at least occasionally monitored by human operators.
When we think of automation and control, we may be
tempted to assume we’re talking about industrial automation, the
factory floor and relatively closed systems in factories, While this
is undeniably an important and growing field, with innovations
coming thick and fast to improve manufacturing of goods, automation also includes a huge number of different commercial
applications that fall somewhere between “industrial” in the traditional sense and “consumer.” They are more things that make
products and services more convenient for the end user but which
the end user does not really need to be aware of.
For example, if a company has sold 5,000 commercial freezers that are installed in restaurants, meat packing plants and the
like, it is now possible to install a low-cost Internet connection—
or even an embedded Web page—to monitor things like power
consumption or other diagnostic parameters. Data sent over the
Internet can be collected on a server and can alert service personnel of needed maintenance, avoiding downtime and increasing
customer satisfaction.
The growing field of what is loosely called “machine to
machine” involves small individual modules, which by virtue
of their connection to other elements actually form a quite large
distributed system. Fleet management is a prime example where
modules in trucks with GPS give constant location information,
while other sensors read codes from cargo loads to update routing
and pickup/delivery data to optimize the use of the fleet. Other
units at terminals update data on freight consignments. Such
systems consist of many small modules with different functions
(location, cargo, routing, freight received, etc.) communicating
directly with each other and with a central server to form an overall system that is quite large and complex and which can easily
be expanded or reduced—by adding or removing modules—as
needed.
Such systems can integrate with more traditional industrial
automation so that a factory operation could track anticipated
arrival of inventory, and shift operations to accommodate anticipated delays or early arrivals of parts. On the other end, such
connectivity can make it easier to react to customer demands for
custom and semi-custom product configurations, something that
is becoming routine in the auto industry. The possibilities are
endless.
It may just be that we have yet to fully appreciate the potential of connectivity among what are relatively simple units individually, but which can make up vast and highly useful systems.
Now that almost all new networking is using IP addressing, and
increasingly IPv6, it is possible (though not actually practical or
advisable) to connect anything to anything else. Simply hooking
a bunch of units together obviously does not make a useful system. But the potential will exist in almost every piece of equipment sold. The possibility of sending control commands and data
over almost any IP network to and from almost any device opens
up a whole new field of possibilities for system design.
The well-known motto from Sun Microsystems, “The network is the computer,” becomes truer every day. It is safe to say
that a great deal of thought and energy will be put into just how to
use the potential offered by what one is tempted to call “universal connectivity.” And it is also safe to say that we are just at the
beginning of discovering that potential, because in addition to
the possibilities for connection, there is also now the bandwidth
needed to make it truly useful.
August 2007
Be Sure to Visit Us Twice
at 2 ATCA Summits!
Paris, Sept. 18-19 (Booths 22/23) and
Santa Clara, Oct. 16-18 (Booth 307)
v
v
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Telecom, datacom, communications. Call it
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Sharing this constant transformation is the
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communications hardware to commercial-offthe-shelf platforms based on AdvancedTCA,
AdvancedMC and MicroTCA.
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IndustryInsider
AUGUST
August 2007
Motorola to Form Consortium to Lead OpenSAF Project
Motorola has announced that it intends to form an industry-wide consortium that will assume
stewardship for the OpenSAF project the company announced in February. The company also announced the first release of the open source code related to the project. The consortium also
will manage any future development of the OpenSAF code base. Leading companies including
Ericsson, HP and Nokia Siemens Networks have expressed support for this initiative.
The purpose of the open source project is to establish a broadly adopted high-availability operating environment that can be leveraged by computing technology companies, network equipment
providers (NEPs) and other industries requiring high availability. Independent software vendors
(ISVs) will be able to use OpenSAF as a benchmark for creating highly available applications.
OpenSAF includes an implementation of the Service Availability Forum Application Interface Specification (AIS). Details of the OpenSAF code release and additional information on the OpenSAF
initiative can be found at www.opensaf.org.
As an open source project, OpenSAF has no dependencies on specific vendors’ products,
and support plans and future enhancements will be directly determined by the users of, and contributors to, the OpenSAF project. Adopting OpenSAF will enable more efficient use of in-house
software engineering resources, and additional tools will be provided to enable application development and deployment services.
The goals of the OpenSAF project are as follows:
• Create an open source implementation of a high-availability operating environment that
includes the SA Forum Application Interface Specification (AIS)
• Develop necessary additional complementary services necessary to deploy and manage
the software
• Help accelerate the development of SA Forum specifications by proposing enhancements
• Establish a broadly adopted high-availability operating environment that can be leveraged
by computing technology companies, NEPs and other industries requiring high availability
and ISVs
• Utilize an open source licensing model not tied to any commercial implementation
Cypress Partners with
InPhase on Holographic
Data Storage Drive
Cypress Semiconductor Corp.
(NYSE: CY) announced today
that it has partnered with InPhase
Technologies to supply a CMOS
image sensor solution for InPhase’s
Tapestry holographic data storage
system. Cypress and InPhase have
collaborated since 2005 to develop
an ultra-sensitive and ultra-fast
CMOS image sensor to meet the
high-speed reading of data recorded by InPhase’s Tapestry drive. The
Cypress CMOS imager features a
digital interface and is sized with
a pixel count of 1696 x 1710 and a
pixel pitch of 8 microns. The imager enables data to be read at 500
frames per second.
Holographic storage delivers
high capacity by recording data
throughout the volume of the recording material, and not just on
the surface. With each flash of the
laser, a data page of approximately
1 million bits is recorded. Each
data page is located at a unique address within the material and several hundred pages of data, each
with their own unique address, are
recorded in the same location of
the medium. Each of these collections of data pages is then referred
to as a “book.” This new recording
technique enables more holograms
to be stored in the same volume of
material by overlapping not only
pages, but also books of data. This
dramatically increases the storage
density.
Cypress’s new sensor of-
ferings address the trend to have
digital LVDS outputs for highspeed sensors, as demonstrated
with proven custom designs for
holographic data storage readers.
Cypress’s custom image sensor approach is to provide full turnkey
solutions for customers, including
design services, package and test
development, product prototyping
and characterization, production
setup and production logistics management.
New and Updated
CANopen Specifications
Announced
The CAN in Automation
(CiA) nonprofit organization has
released several new and updated
CANopen specifications.
Topping the list is the CiA
311 XML electronic data sheet
(EDS) specification. It defines
the XML scheme to be used
for the electronic description of
CANopen devices. The specification is based on the ISO 15745
standard. In the future, XML
electronic data sheets will substitute the well-known ASCIIbased EDS as specified in CiA
306. EDS are used by configuration, diagnostic or testing tools
to get information about the
CANopen device to be configured, diagnosed or tested.
The CiA 414-1/2 device profile specifications describe the
CANopen interface for weaving
machine feeders. They cover
simple feeder devices as well as
sophisticated multi-feeder devices. “This device profile is the
first for modular weaving machines,” said Holger Zeltwanger,
CiA managing director. “We are
going to develop further device
profiles for modular machines,
such as for printing, packaging
and other industries.”
The CiA 425-2 profile for
contrast media injectors has
been updated. The released version 2.0.1 is going to be implemented by several American,
European and Japanese injector manufacturers as well as
by several companies producing image processing medical
devices. It is the first profile in
the range of add-on devices for
computer tomography, magnetic resonator and angiography.
It also could be used for ultrasonic devices.
The updated and reviewed
CiA 303-1 recommendation describing the pin assignment for
several connectors contains the
first Chinese connector. This 3pin connector (em069A-3) is dedicated to low-cost devices. The
recommendation contains more
than 20 connectors to be used for
CANopen devices.
August 2007
Industry Insider
Intel Carrier Grade
Platforms Certified for Sun
Solaris
After a broad agreement
between the two companies, Intel has announced availability of
Sun Microsystems’ Solaris Operating System on Intel-based
telecommunications rack and
blade servers. The systems are
carrier-grade rackmount servers that are Network Equipment-Building System (NEBS)
Level 3 and European Telecommunications Standards Institute
(ETSI)-compliant, and blades
that adhere to the AdvancedTCA
(ATCA) standards.
The combination of Solaris 10 operating system (OS)
on telecommunications servers from Intel increases the
choices for service providers
and telecommunications equipment manufacturers wishing to
keep existing applications and
deploy next-generation applications within their preferred
operating system environment.
The new Intel Carrier Grade
Rack Mount Server TIGW1U
is the first Intel carrier grade
server shipping today that supports both Linux and Solaris
OS. The Intel NetStructure
MPCBL0050 Single Board
Computer (SBC), based on the
ATCA architecture, will ship
in the third quarter of 2007 and
also will support both Linux
and Solaris OSs.
The TIGW1U and MPCBL0050 allow operators that
require NEBS-certified platforms to deploy their applications in both a rackmount server
and bladed architecture. The
Intel Carrier Grade Rack Mount
Server TIGW1U has completed
Solaris Hardware Certification
Test Suite (HCTS) and is posted
on Sun’s Hardware Compatibility
List (HCL) Web site (www.sun.
com/bigadmin/hcl). This server
can now be deployed with the Solaris 10 OS or other carrier-grade
operating systems, including
MontaVista, Red Hat and Wind
August 2007
River. The Intel NetStructure
MCPBL0050 SBC is also going
through HCTS and is expected to
be certified for the Solaris 10 OS
when it is released.
PICMG and CP-TA Wrap
Up First Cooperative
Interoperability Workshop
The Communications
Platforms Trade Association
(CP-TA) and PICMG teamed up
in Chicago during the week of
June 11 for their first joint Interoperability Workshop, demonstrating structured testing to
industry profiles. PICMG has
hosted Interoperability Workshops for its members since the
early days of CompactPCI, but
this is the first time it has opened
the events to another organization. Previous AdvancedTCA
Interoperability
Workshops
have tested the multi-vendor interoperability of new products
designed to the AdvancedTCA
specifications.
For this event, participation was open to members of both
CP-TA and PICMG. As always,
testing was conducted in a protected, confidential environment,
allowing participants to test
and resolve any inconsistencies.
Twenty-five companies and 70
participants joined in interoperability workshops, completing
tests for thermal, manageability,
data transport and other interoperability issues.
During the event, CPTA demonstrated its improved
AdvancedTCA interoperability
test tools. The ATCA-Tester
from Polaris Networks tested
manageability interoperability
while Degree Controls, Inc.’s
Chassis Scan and Blade Profiler
tested thermal interoperability.
CP-TA and PICMG will work
together on future Interoperability Workshops. For more
information on the next event,
visit PICMG at www.picmg.
org or visit CP-TA at www.cpta.org.
Embedded Planet to
Resell Ultimate Solutions
Development Tools
Embedded Planet has announced a partnering agreement
with embedded tools provider Ultimate Solutions. Under the new
agreement, Embedded Planet
will become a North American
authorized reseller of Abatron
Development Tools, including the
BDI2000 BDM/JTAG emulator.
The Abatron BDI2000
BDM/JTAG emulator is a flexible
and high-performance emulator.
It supports numerous CPU architectures and features high-speed
file download and debug over its
Ethernet interface. The BDI2000
supports kernel debugging when
an MMU is enabled on the target
processor making it a good choice
for developers of Linux board
support packages and device drivers. In addition to Linux development support, the BDI2000 can
be used for board bring up and
supports programming of a wide
range of flash devices. Embedded
Planet will bundle the BDI2000
with support and configuration
files for Embedded Planet boardlevel products for customers in
North America.
IEEE Moves Current
802.20 Mobile Broadband
Draft Forward
The non-conflicted IEEE 802
Executive Committee has adopted
a motion to immediately change
the voting approach within the
IEEE 802.20 Working Group on
Mobile Broadband Wireless Access (MBWA). The new approach
requires that all votes and ballots
in the working group be cast on
the basis of entity affiliation, with
a single vote allowed for each entity. After adopting the new procedure, the Working Group voted
to accept the new IEEE 802.20
draft standard, and forward it to a
Working Group letter ballot.
The IEEE 802.20 Working
Group is creating an air-interface
standard to deliver voice, video
and data services to portable computers and other mobile devices
at levels comparable to those of
wired broadband systems. The
standard, IEEE P802.20, “Standard Air Interface for Mobile
Broadband Wireless Access
Systems Supporting Vehicular
Mobility - Physical and Media
Access Control Layer Specification,” will boost real-time data
transmission rates in wireless
metropolitan area networks to 1
Mbit/s or more. It will do so at
a range of at least 15 km from a
basestation for users traveling up
to 250 km/hr.
The latest NC-EC actions
are among several the IEEE has
taken over the past year after
conducting an investigation into
a lack of transparency, possible
dominance, and other irregularities in the MBWA working
group. In addition to the reorganization, which included the
naming of a new Working Group
chair and officers, a call for proposals was issued to solicit additional technical contributions for
a new draft of the IEEE P802.20
standard. Several corporations
responded with content that has
been incorporated into a revised
draft. IEEE P802.20 is sponsored by the IEEE LAN/MAN
Standards Committee within the
IEEE Computer Society.
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Coupled with exceptional support services, we have what you need to
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Platforms. Blades. Software. Support.
Many solutions. One vendor.
Technology
I n C onte x t
Mezzanine Board Strategies
for Communications
Mezzanines offer an excellent solution to local high-performance
signal acquisition and preprocessing, saving costly processor
resources. With FPGAs, they can be reconfigured to meet new
communications standards extending system life cycle.
by Rodger H. Hosking
Pentek
d
exploration
er your goal
eak directly
al page, the
resource.
chnology,
and products
Mezzanines in communication
F
ew embedded system applications
Receive
Antenna
encompass a more diverse range
of signal frequencies, signaling
Demod
Decode
Lowpass
Receive
IF
schemes, numbers of channels, data rates
RF
A/D
Decrypt
Digital
Filter &
Channel
Receiver
Conv
Expand
Mixer
Decimator
and signal processing algorithms than
Data
Despread
Analyze
communications systems. Apart from this
Digital Down
Digital
extreme diversity, communications sysConverter (DDC)
Local OSC
Transmit
tems must now handle wider signal bandAntenna
widths to meet the needs of new complex
panies providing solutions now
modulation schemes and higher data rates
Modulate
ration into products, technologies and companies. Whether your goal is to research theTransmit
latest
Encode
IF
to
support
large
numbers
of
these
chanD/A
Interpolation
Digital
RF
Channel
lication Engineer, or jump to a company's technical page, the goal of Get Connected
is to put youEncrypt
Conv
Filter
Mixer
Transmit
Data
Compress
nels.
ice you require for
whatever type of technology,
Spread
System
integrators
faced with the
ies and products you are
searching
for.
Digital Up
Digital
task of delivering custom communication
Converter (DUC)
Local OSC
systems using COTS board-level products
Figure 1 Basic signal processing blocks for a typical communications transceiver
have traditionally relied on mezzanine
system.
boards (or daughter cards) for modular
and flexible interfaces.
But new technologies and new mez- costs and boosting performance, choosing converts the antenna signal to an intermezanine standards have cast mezzanines for the right mezzanine boards now becomes diate frequency (IF), as shown in Figure 1.
communication systems into complex and a much more significant part of successful This IF signal can then be digitized by a
critical roles previously handled by other system design.
wide range of monolithic A/D converters
full-size boards in the system. By cutting
capable of 14- or 16-bit accuracy and samCommunication System Basics pling rates of 100 MHz and higher. The
The receiver section of a modern com- IF signal bandwidth usually covers the enGet Connected
munication system typically starts with an tire span of the particular communication
with companies mentioned in this article.
www.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected
analog RF stage that amplifies and down- band and may contain many different car-
End of Article
10
August 2007
Get Connected with companies mentioned in this article.
Which Way do You Want Your 10Gb Ethernet?
2500MB/sec 10G
b
250MB/se
c 1Gb
Software Stack
Conventional NIC Technology
Silicon Stack
Critical I/O XGE
Silicon Stack Technology from Critical I/O.
10Gb Ethernet at Wire Speed.
[Problem] You’re expecting 10Gb Ethernet to deliver a whole lot more performance to your
embedded system. But what if you invest in it and get no gain at all? The performance of
nearly all existing 1Gb applications are limited by the software overhead associated with
the TCP/IP protocol stack. This bottleneck is in the software stack, not the network hardware.
So, simply upgrading to 10Gb pipes will not improve your system’s performance.
[Solution] Unlike conventional Ethernet interfaces or processor-based “offload” products,
Critical I/O’s Silicon Stack technology eliminates this inherent bottleneck by offloading
protocol processing to silicon; thereby achieving sustained line-rate performance,
microsecond latency, and rock-solid deterministic behavior. And, Silicon Stack is
100% compliant with Ethernet standards, allowing you to leverage existing
applications and hardware.
XGE Silicon Stack Ethernet
vs. Software-based Stack
Software Stack
10Gb
1Gb
10Gb
40
varies
with protocol
250
2500
1Gb
Throughput
max sustained rate
in MBytes/sec
Host Overhead
Very High
Latency
125 μsec
Determinism
max sustained rate
Reliability
Silicon Stack
Horrible
± 200 μsec
Poor when under
heavy load
Very Low
12 μsec
5 μsec
Rock Solid
± 1 μsec
Excellent under
all load conditions,
no dropped data
Technology InContext
riers, each at its own frequency.
Extracting multiple signal channels
from this digitized IF band requires digital down-conversion (DDC). This process
starts with a digital local oscillator that
produces samples of a sine wave set to
the carrier frequency. The samples from
the A/D are then mixed with the oscillator samples using a digital multiplier.
This translates the carrier signal down to
baseband and produces a complex (I+Q)
digital signal with upper and lower sidebands centered at 0 Hz. A digital low pass
filter set for the signal bandwidth removes
adjacent channel signals, leaving only the
channel of interest. Because the bandwidth
CH A
In
105 MHz
14bit A/D
CH B
In
105 MHz
14bit A/D
CLK A
CLK B
Clock &
Sync Bus
Dual
Timing
Bus
Gen
CH A
Out
500 MHz
16-bit D/A
CH B
Out
500 MHz
16-bit D/A
match the sample rate of the digital mixer
and local oscillator. These stages up-convert the baseband transmit signal to the
IF frequency. A D/A converter produces
an analog IF signal, which is fed into the
analog RF transmitter section to drive the
antenna. All of the signal processing steps
to the left of the D/A must be repeated for
each channel.
Because the A/D and D/A converters
generate and require sampled data streams
at very high sample rates, general-purpose
programmable processors cannot reasonably handle these substantial DSP tasks.
Instead, designers often choose ASICs
targeted for the specific receive and trans-
12
August 2007
8/16/07 3:03:44 PM
256 MB
SDRAM
Data
Mux
GC4016
QUAD
DDC
32
64
320 MHz
Interpolator
& Digital Up
Converter
16 MB
FLASH
PCI 2.2
Interface
64 bits
66 MHz
64
PCI Bus
Interpolation
Filter Core
RocketIO
MGT
Dual 4x
Gigabit Serial
XMC
Fabric
Connector
Model 7140-420 Software Radio Transceiver XMC Mezzanine with
Communication IP Cores.
of the filtered output has been reduced, an
output decimator drops the sampling rate
commensurate with that bandwidth.
Finally, depending on the type of
transmission, additional processing steps
for demodulation, decoding and decryption are needed to recover the receive
channel data. All of the digital signal
processing steps shown in the top half of
Figure 1 to the right of the A/D must be
repeated for each channel.
On the transmit side, the signal
processing steps are exactly reversed, as
shown in the lower half of Figure 1. Transmit channel data must first be processed
with the appropriate modulation, encoding
and encryption to make it compatible for
the transmission channel protocols. The
digital up-conversion (DUC) stage then
follows. Here, the digital sample stream
signal enters an interpolation filter, which
preserves the frequency characteristics of
the signal, but boosts the sampling rate to
Untitled-2 1
128 MB
SDRAM
Wideband
DDC Core
Xilinx XC2VP50 FPGA
Figure 2
128 MB
SDRAM
Wideband
DDC Core
mit requirements of the signal channel.
However, because of the variety of communication signal types and frequency
characteristics, the signal processing tasks
tend to be quite unique for each system.
As a result, there is no single standard
ASIC available to handle a wide range of
applications.
Emerging Mezzanine Standards
Successful adoption of mezzanines
springs directly from standardization of
mezzanine architectures. Standards create
win-win situations by assuring customers
of multi-vendor availability and competitive prices, and assuring board vendors of
a viable marketplace worthy of investment
in product development. Several popular
mezzanine standards emerging during the
last few years have hit home runs. Topping the list is the ubiquitous PCI Mezzanine Card (PMC) and its unfolding series
of performance enhancements.
The Harsher the
Environment, the
More You Need
MEN Micro!
Intel® Pentium®M up
to Core™(2) Duo
CompactPCI®/Express
Figure 3
Model 7140 Software Radio Transceiver XMC mezzanine.
A new standard that defines gigabit
serial links to mezzanine boards for embedded communication systems is defined
in the VITA 42 standard, also known as
XMC. As an extension to PMC, the XMC
specification defines two new connectors that join the mezzanine board to the
host or carrier board. At serial bit rates of
3.125 GHz, a dual connector XMC interface supports data rates of 5 Gbytes/s in
each direction.
Although not yet fully adopted, various draft sub-specifications for VITA 42
shown in Table 1 define the implementation of industry standard switched fabrics.
Popular serial fabric clock rates, the number of data lines and the resulting transfer rates in each direction are shown for
either one (J15) or two (J15 and J16) XMC
connectors.
FPGAs on Communication
Mezzanines
Among the first products to take advantage of FPGA technology are mezzanine boards. Because of this, as the features and densities of new FPGA families
emerged, they significantly impacted the
architectures of communication systems
in many different ways. Not only can
FPGAs be configured to implement numerous electrical interface standards,
they can also implement a variety of communication algorithms for modulation
and demodulation, encoding and decoding, encryption and decryption along with
protocol handling.
By offloading these real-time DSP,
logic and bit-rate processing tasks from
general-purpose programmable DSP or
RISC processors, fewer processor boards
are needed in the system, saving significant costs. Further, these front-end FPGA
engines can extract signal information
before it leaves the mezzanine module,
resulting in less downstream traffic and
lower system data rates.
Since FPGAs can be reconfigured to
perform new functions without having to
redesign the mezzanine PC board, they
can accommodate new communications
standards and protocols to help safeguard
against product obsolescence, both at the
board level and at the deployed system
level. When upgrading older communication systems, a single FPGA-based product can replace several legacy products,
thanks to improved logic density and flexible interfaces.
As if these benefits were not enough,
For the harshest
industrial and mobile
applications, MEN Micro
offers more solutions, including:
■
Core™ 2 Duo T7400, 2.16 GHz
■
Core™ Duo T2500, 2 GHz
■
■
■
■
Pentium® M 760/Celeron
M 373, 1.2 GHz
Side cards - UART, multimedia,
USB and more!
Compatible 3U Intel® family with
scalable computing performance
Long-term availability- up to 15 years
RoHS
MEN Micro, Inc.
COMPLIANT
24 North Main Street
2002/95/EC
Ambler, PA 19002
Tel: 215.542.9575
E-mail: [email protected]
www.menmicro.com
August 2007
13
J15 Only
J15 & J16
VITA
Description
42.0
Base XMC Spec
-
-
-
-
-
42.1
Parallel RapidIO
Par
8 x 500 MHz
1 GB/sec
16 x 500 MHz
2.0 GB/sec
42.2
Serial RapidIO
Ser
8 x 3.125 GHz
2.5 GB/sec
16 x 3.125 GHz
5.0 GB/sec
42.3
PCI Express
Ser
8 x 2.5 GHz
2.0 GB/sec
16 x 2.5 GHz
4.0 GB/sec
42.4
HyperTransport
Par
8 x 800 MHz
1.6 GB/sec
16 x 800 MHz
3.2 GB/sec
42.5
Aurora
Ser
8 x 3.125 GHz
2.5 GB/sec
16 x 3.125 GHz
5.0 GB/sec
42.10
General Purpose I/O
-
-
-
-
-
STD
Table 1
Type
Lanes x Clock
Transfer Rate
Transfer Rate
Lanes x Clock
VITA 42 - XMC Draft Sub-Specifications define specific implementations
for popular fabrics.
FPGAs are the primary enabling technology for the new XMC gigabit serial extensions to PMC modules. During the last few
years, FPGA emerged from Xilinx featuring gigabit transceivers called RocketIO
MGTs (multi-gigabit transceivers), while
Altera offers counterparts dubbed StratixGX MGTs. Data channel encoders and
decoders support these physical interface
drivers and include serial/parallel conver-
1
14Untitled-3 August
2007
sion so that data and clock are combined
in the signaling on each differential pair
over the external serial channel. Serializer/deserializer (SERDES) blocks, built
right into the FPGA, include circuitry for
both receive and transmit functions.
A protocol engine within the FPGA
interfaces with the SERDES to correctly
process packets, header information, control functions, error detection and correc-
8/16/07 3:05:09 PM
tion and payload data format. Since each
switched serial fabric standard has its own
protocols and rules, FPGAs offer excellent flexibility by allowing users to install
the appropriate IP core protocol engine.
The strategy makes FPGA-based XMC
modules truly “fabric agnostic” and allows one hardware design to be deployed
in several different fabric environments.
Enhanced Digital Up- and
Down-Conversion
By taking advantage of FPGA technology to extend the bandwidth range of
the ASIC devices, commercial off-theshelf mezzanine modules for communication systems can become flexible enough
to satisfy a wider range of markets and
signal types.
Figure 2 shows a typical software
radio transceiver PMC/XMC mezzanine
module for communication systems. It
features two 14-bit 105 MHz A/Ds and
two 16-bit 500 MHz D/As connected to
a Xilinx XC2VP50 FPGA. Two ASIC
devices handle DDC and DUC functions with memory, timing and system
interfaces completing the product. Note
that the XMC interface uses the built-in
RocketIO gigabit serial transceivers of the
FPGA.
The DDC ASIC is a Texas Instruments GC4016 four-channel narrowband
device with decimation settings ranging
from 32 to 16,384. Since channel bandwidth is inversely proportional to the
decimation factor, a factor of 32 limits the
maximum channel bandwidth to about 2.5
MHz, falling far short of many communication signal types.
To handle wider signals, two wideband DDC IP cores are installed in the
FPGA with decimation settings ranging from 2 to 64, delivering a maximum
channel bandwidth of 40 MHz for both
A/Ds. Programmable data switches inside the FPGA allow the wideband DDC
cores to be driven directly from the A/D
converter or in cascade from the outputs
of the GC4016 DDC. This extends the
maximum decimation of the GC4016 by
a factor of 64. By including the new wideband DDC core, the overall decimation
range for the mezzanine now becomes 2
to 1,048,576 instead of the previous 32 to
16,384. This extended range translates directly to an enormous range of input signal bandwidths from 76 Hz to 40 MHz.
The DUC ASIC is a Texas Instruments DAC5686 wideband device with
interpolation settings of 2 to 16. Like the
DDC, the output channel bandwidth is inversely proportional to the interpolation
factor, so with a maximum interpolation
setting of only 16, narrowband transmit
signals are not supported. To handle narrowband signals an interpolation filter is
installed in the FPGA with programmable interpolation factors from 16 to 1024.
Again, a programmable data switch allows
the ASIC DUC to be driven directly from
the data interface for wideband signals or
from the output of the interpolation filter
for narrowband signals. With the interpolation core, the overall interpolation range
extends from 2 to 16,384 instead of the
previous 2 to 16. It can now accommodate
output signal bandwidths from 4.8 kHz to
40 MHz.
Since all of these critical functions fit
in a such a compact form-factor as shown
in Figure 3, it is easy to see why FPGAs
have been so widely deployed on mezzanine modules for communication systems.
Of course, many other signal processing
tasks such as those shown in the transmit and receive signal processing blocks
in Figure 1 can also be handled by the
FPGA.
More sophisticated signal processing
operations such as beamforming techniques can lead to significant improvements in communication systems. Examples abound along the highway where
numerous cell phone towers show arrays
of vertical antennas, usually in groups of
four. Signals from multiple receive antennas can be phase shifted by using the mezzanine module memories as digital delay
blocks to enhance reception of a signal arriving from a specific direction. Likewise,
transmission using multiple antennas with
phase-shifted signals can steer the outgoing signal toward a specific target. This not
only provides better service to subscribers
but also allows frequency reuse within a
cell by dividing the cell into beam-formed
pie-shaped sectors.
When new critical ASIC devices
emerge, the standardization and modular-
ity of mezzanines support new technology
insertion by simple replacement, rather
than scrapping a whole system. This modularity also reduces maintenance, troubleshooting and service costs. And finally,
the switched fabric interfaces already
available on many mezzanine modules
ensure plenty of data bandwidth for future
wideband signal types.
Pentek
Upper Saddle River, NJ.
(201) 818-5900.
[www.pentek.com].
August 2007
15
Technology
I n C onte x t
Mezzanines in communication
Mezzanines Enable
Next-Generation
Communication Design
The next generation of communication network equipment will need
to be both powerful and easily upgraded. In addition, the lowered
cost and adaptability to new technologies are becoming essential.
Emerging mezzanine and carrier card technologies will be key to
these goals.
by Stuart Jamieson
Emerson Network Power
M
ezzanine and carrier cards are a
modular design approach that has
seen many refinements during
the last decade. Essentially, the approach
seeks to separate a communication system
board design into two sections. One section, the carrier, contains those functions
that are common to the board’s core function. The second section, the mezzanine
card, contains those functions that are
variable within a board type.
Many different types of boards are
amenable to this design approach. A
server blade, for example, would have a
carrier containing the control and data
plane interfaces to the server backplane
as well as IP packet handling and system
management functions. The server blade
mezzanine would carry the media access
control and physical layers for whatever
I/O the blade is intended to handle. In one
instance it might be 10 Gigabit Ethernet,
while in another instance it could be an
E1/T1 link. A different example of the approach might be a controller board with
fixed I/O functions. In this case the carrier contains the I/O while the processor
resides on the mezzanine.
The mezzanine and carrier card ap-
16
August 2007
Single-Width,
Full-Height
Modules
Double-Width,
Full-Height Module
Single Width, Half-Height Modules
Single-Width,
Figure 1
AdvancedMC modules are available in a variety of sizes, with power
capacity to 80W, making them flexible enough to encompass a range of
cost and performance trade-offs.
proach offers two significant advantages.
The first is that it speeds the creation of
design variations. Once the server blade
carrier is designed, for instance, creating
blades that handle a variety of different
interfaces becomes simply a matter of designing the appropriate mezzanine cards.
The bulk of the blade design has already
been done.
The second advantage is reduced cost.
Proper partitioning of the carrier and mez-
zanine functions enables each to be used
in multiple designs. This increases their
market and potential production volumes,
gaining economies of scale. The gains are
even greater if the carrier and mezzanine
are based on open standards. Standardsbased mezzanine or carrier card designs
can be both used internally and marketed
to others, further increasing production
economies.
Industrial SBC
Supports Wired
and Wireless
Communications
WinSystems’ LBC-GX500 is a highly
integrated, single board computer (SBC)
designed for machine-to-machine
connectivity with a wide variety of wired
and wireless options. It provides an open
and powerful platform for management of
geographically distributed machinery.
• AMD GX500@1W processor
• PC-compatible: supports Linux
and Windows® XP embedded and
other popular RTOS
• Operates from -40º to +85º C with no fan
• 10/100 Mbps Intel Ethernet controller
• 10 COM ports and 6 USB ports
• Socket support for 56kbps POTS modem,
GPRS/CDMA cellular modem, ZigBee
and 802.11a/b/g wireless modules
• 48 bi-directional TTL digital I/O lines
• Flat panel and CRT supported
• Onboard AT keyboard, PS/2 mouse, LPT,
FDC, and UDMA disk controllers
• Type I and II CompactFlash cards supported
• PC/104 and PC/104 Plus expansion
• Optional 12-bit A/D converter, 8 SE/4 DI
• Optional Trimble GPS receiver
• EBX-size: 5.75” x 8.00” (147mm x 203mm)
• Long-term product availability
• Quick Start kits for software development
Off-the-shelf delivery, knowledgeable technical
support, long-term availability and the right
price makes WinSystems’ LBC-GX500 the SBC
of choice for your application.
Call 817-274-7553 or
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Ask about our 30-day
product evaluation!
715 Stadium Drive • Arlington, Texas 76011
Phone 817-274-7553 • FAX 817-548-1358
TM
Mezzanines Keep Designs
Current
The mezzanine approach also provides a method for readily handling the
evolution of technology. As I/O technology changes, for instance, a blade design
can keep pace simply by upgrading the
mezzanine card and keeping the carrier. If
the system needs a backplane performance
upgrade, the carriers can be replaced but
the mezzanine cards retained.
The history of standards-based mez-
18
August 2007
zanine and carrier designs shows that they
have proven their worth in communication systems. The earliest communication
boards used proprietary designs, limiting
their market reach. Later, communication systems began embracing standardsbased designs to lower costs; leveraging
technologies such as the personal computer’s peripheral component interconnect
(PCI) bus as a connection backplane. The
PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturer’s
Group (PICMG) created CompactPCI as
such a standard for using PCI in an industrial setting.
Unfortunately, the initial standards
did not fully meet communication systems’ needs. This led to many changes
in the CompactPCI standard, including
the definition of the PCI mezzanine card
(PMC) to allow the creation of common cards with different I/O variations.
CompactPCI also embraced system management functions, optional card hot-swap
capability, the addition of the H110 timedivision multiplexed (TDM) backplane,
and eventually a packet-switched dualstar Gigabit Ethernet backplane (cPSB) to
eliminate the single-point of failure inherent in PCI’s parallel backplane.
Eventually, however, the CompactPCI
approach started hitting performance limits. Designs needed bigger processors,
more functionality and greater data rates
than the PCI bus/gigabyte Ethernet ports
and CompactPCI cards could handle.
This led to the creation of the Advanced
Telecommunications Computing Architecture (ATCA), an open standard based
on a protocol-agnostic packet-switched
backplane.
The ATCA standard offers several advantages over CompactPCI and its cPSB
extension. One is that ATCA is designed
to require hot-swap and system management functions and to support redundant
architectures, rather than making these optional capabilities. Another is that ATCA
simplifies the power structure, replacing
a collection of different voltages with a
single, -48V feed. ATCA cards convert
whatever they need on-board from that
single supply. This approach also allows
the ready implementation of electronic
keying, which has the system query the
board to find out if it is installed in a compatible slot before giving it the go-ahead to
power-up its backplane I/O drivers.
A third advantage to ATCA is its highspeed serial backplane, with built-in meshing support, that is protocol-agnostic. The
SERDES interfaces that ATCA boards
utilize can support Ethernet, RapidIO, or
any other serial protocol for backplane signaling, rather than being limited to a single
type. ATCA also uses larger boards than
cPCI and cPSB, enabling the use of more
powerful processor designs and allowing
room for increased functionality.
ATCA cards retained the advantages
con:card+
70
the most reliable AdvancedMC connectors
A new standard in reliability
con:card+ is a new quality seal that identifies connectors possible offset between connector contacts and module pads
providing the highest level of mating reliability for by 60%, thus significantly increasing the mating reliability of
con:card+MicroTCA
EvenTMunder
high and
shock
and vibration,
con:card
®
backplanes
AdvancedTCA
carrier
blades. + connectors
AdvancedMCTM modules.
will keep the AdvancedMC™ modules in the correct position
™
™
con:card+ connectors feature
the unique GuideSpring By preventing
the connector,
con:card+
connecmodules.
helping tomodule
assurefloat
the in
reliability
of your
MicroTCA
backplane
technology. The GuideSpring pushes and holds the tors also enhance the reliability of AdvancedMCTM systems under
®
and
carriade.
AdvancedMCTM module against the connector housing. shock
andAdvancedTCA
vibrations.
™
module precisely within the slot prior to
By systematically positioning the module precisely in the
connector,™con:card+ connectors reduce the maximum
system tremendously.
innovation by
+
HARTING + ept – at
www.concardplus.com
Learn more about the 5 con:card+ features at www.concardplus.com
of the mezzanine approach by supporting
the use of as many as four PMC modules
on-board. PMC modules suffer from the
drawbacks of their origins, however, and
are not individually hot-swappable even
though the ATCA card is. Additionally
PMCs do not have a means to be part of
the ATCA card’s management system.
They have also proven too small to contain
the kind of processing power that today’s
communication systems require. To overcome these limitations, PICMG defined
20
August 2007
the advanced mezzanine card (AMC) in a
variety of sizes (Figure 1).
AMCs Offer Advantages
AMC modules incorporate many attributes that enhance their performance
and utility. They have independently powered core logic and backplane interfaces
and are under the control of system management by the carrier card. They also
offer as many as five clock lines. These
features allow AMC cards to support
high-reliability design both through redundancy and the ability to be hot-swappable at the module level. AMC cards can
also offer electronic keying, keeping the
bus interface disabled until the system can
verify that the module is in a slot that will
support its function. AMC modules also
include as many as 20 lanes of protocolagnostic serial channels to the backplane
operating as fast as 12.5 Gbits/s, This is
the equivalent of 20 10Gbit Ethernet links
to each AMC. The multitude of channels
facilitates the creation of various high-reliability network technologies, including
star and mesh networks.
The high performance and functional
capacity of ATCA cards and AMC modules make them suitable for handling the
most demanding telecom applications.
These include radio network controllers
(RNC), media gateways (MG), signaling
gateways (SG), Softswitch and IMS infrastructure applications. However, the large
8U card size and high power (potentially
greater than 200W) ratings of the ATCA
carrier boards that make them telecom
powerhouses leave them too bulky for applications where size and power are limited. Such applications include wireless
base stations, Gigabit passive optical networks (GPON) and IP private branch exchange (IP PBX) systems. To address the
needs of these systems, PICMG developed
the MicroTCA specification (Figure 2).
MicroTCA reuses the AMC modules
designed for ATCA, but eliminates the
carrier card. Instead, the AMC modules
plug directly into the MicroTCA system
backplane. Because AMC modules were
designed to be hot-swappable, use a protocol-agnostic serial backplane interface,
and support system management functions, a MicroTCA system design retains
the reliability features and much of the
performance of ATCA, but in a smaller
form-factor. MicroTCA systems can range
in size from a full shelf to as small as two
modules (Figure 3).
One key to using AMC modules as
stand-alone boards in a card cage rather
than simply being mezzanine cards is the
replication of ATCA carrier card support functions in the MicroTCA shelf
design. Control that resides on the carrier
in ATCA systems, including shelf management, clock distribution and switched
fabric control for the cards and system,
What if it rains? Would it matter?
Hop on and drive. Up winding mountain roads. Across wide open plains.
Darting through city trafﬁc. Feel the engine hum, the sun, wind, dirt, and
yes, even the rain.
Now consider the fact that a fully functional, ultra-mobile PC powers the
all-digital dashboard and controls the Intel® Chopper’s mechanical functions.
Are you beginning to get the idea? This is not just a really cool bike –
it’s a marvel of Intel® embedded technology in an amazing form factor.
What would you do with high-performance technology that rugged,
that durable? What kind of form factor would you use?
To learn more go to: http://developer.intel.com/design/info/893.htm
Intel Embedded Technology. Igniting Innovation.
Intel and the Intel logo are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.
Copyright © 2007 Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.
Optical Mux
Workgroup
Router
Wi-Fi
Base
UMTS
Base
VoIP
100Kb/S
T1 SDTV
1Mb/S
HDTV
10Mb/S
Edge Router /
IP Services Switch
Voice
Gateway
POTS
Switch
PCs
Core Router
Server
Farm
RNC
Home Network
Entertainment
Systems
WDM Box
FttP Host
DSLAM
CMTS
OC-3 OC-12 OC-48 OC-192 OC-768
100Mb/S
10Gb/S
1Gb/S
1Tb/S
100Gb/S
10Tb/S
MicroTCA
Figure 2
The MicroTCA specification expands the market for ATCA’s AMC cards by
offering a design option targeting mid-range cost and performance in a
form-factor more compact than ATCA.
is handled by a MicroTCA Carrier Hub
(MCH). With the MCH providing the
control, AMC modules function in the MicroTCA chassis as though it were simply
a large carrier card. One of the overriding
goals of MicroTCA was to reduce costs,
hence the reduction in the number of field
replaceable units, and the centralization of
that functionality.
the reliability demands of telecom can be
satisfied, while their implicit design reuse
promises low cost and speedy design, with
adaptability for easy system evolution.
The proof of these claims lies in the
adoption of the standards by telecom system designers. Market statistics show that
ATCA-based designs are increasingly being offered for higher-end applications.
AMC Allows Economy of Scale
The creation of MicroTCA provides
additional opportunities for economies
of scale in AMC modules for both operators and network equipment providers.
Because the same modules can be used
in ATCA or MicroTCA systems, a single
AMC design can now serve in a full range
of applications from customer premises
equipment to central office switches. The
resulting market increase promises to reduce the cost of AMC modules, making
MicroTCA practical for cost-sensitive as
well as compact applications. AMC-based
designs can potentially reduce the operational burden costs by simplifying the
sparing model for the operator. By reducing the training for service personnel, the
handling and management of spares, the
operator can save costs in choosing the
equipment that is rolled in their network.
With ATCA cards and MicroTCA
sub-racks serving as carriers for AMC
modules, the benefits of the mezzanine
design approach are now available for the
entire range of communication system designs. The built-in system management,
hot-swap capability and support for redundancy of these standards ensure that
22
August 2007
Two Tier Mixed Width
Two Tier Fixed,
Single-Width Shelf
Single Tier Shelf
MA A A A A A A A A AM
P
P
C MMMMMMMMMM C
M
M
H C C C C C C C C C C H
P
MM A
C M
P H C
M
A A
M M
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A A A
P
M MM
M
C C CM
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A A AH
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C C C
MA A A A A A A A A A AA M
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MA A A A A A A A A A AA M
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Cube Shelf
Back-to-Back Shelf
Pico Shelf
MA A A A A A
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MA A A A A A A A A A A AM
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MicroTCA chassis can range
in size from a full-width
rack shelf to pico-sized
enclosures containing only
a few modules.
Market research firm Venture Development Corp (VDC) reported at the 2007
Bus and Board Conference that more than
half of the U.S. telecom equipment vendors it surveyed, serving the core, edge and
enterprise markets, plan to be purchasing
ATCA hardware by the end of 2007, with
the majority of European and Asia-Pacific
vendors in those markets following suit in
2008. The company also forecasts a total
market for merchant ATCA blades as high
as $1.15 billion in 2009, with markets for
AMC modules at $763 million and MicroTCA systems at $271 million.
Examples of telecom equipment from
manufacturers such as NEC and Nortel,
Siemens’ RNC products and Alcatel’s
GGSN validate this expected drive toward utilizing ATCA. This equipment
also demonstrates that reliable and redundant solutions can be generated from the
ATCA standard. The recent pairings creating Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens
Networks would appear to continue the
momentum for adopting standards-based
solutions. The consolidation may change
the rate of adoption, but with these companies’ memberships in SCOPE (www.
scope-alliance.org) there appears to be
no doubt of a continuing requirement for
open standards-based products
This adoption of ATCA provides an
initial market for AMC modules, paving the way for them to be increasingly
available for MicroTCA system designs.
As MicroTCA is adopted in turn, the two
markets will combine to drive down the
cost and increase the variety and availability of AMC modules for additional design
efforts. The interest in MicroTCA in comparison with ATCA has been significant,
with the likelihood that MicroTCA would
be adopted much sooner than ATCA.
ATCA, MicroTCA and AMC modules thus represent the flowering of the
carrier and mezzanine card design approach in telecom systems. As cards become more available, designs based on the
approach will become easier and faster to
create while dropping in cost. The resulting positive feedback loop will in turn
foster innovation, ensuring increasing
performance and functionality to meet
the demands of next-generation telecom
design.
Emerson Network Power
St. Louis, MO.
(314) 553-2000.
[www.emersonnetworkpower.com].
Acromag introduces affordable FPGA I/O. For ALL your projects.
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Q UA D R AT U R E
All trademarks are the property of their respective companies
solutions
engineering
High availability
The SCOPE Alliance
Carrier Grade Base
Platform Middleware
A reference architecture for carrier grade middleware targets
capabilities to enhance the current SA Forum specifications.
by P
aul Steinberg and Tapio Tallgren
SCOPE Alliance
S
End of Article
CGBP Mgmt. &
Configuration
ervice availability requirements for agement (including software lifecycle that the application software is aware of the
services implemented by network management and live software upgrade), high-availability services provided by the
equipment providers (NEPs) can be as naming services, notification services, ba- CGBP but is not closely tied to the underlyexploration
sic security, logging services and others. ing hardware. On the hardware level, reduner your goal high as 99.99999% (seven nines equates to
Having all of these available as open spec- dant resources are used to prevent service
eak directly unavailability of approximately 3 sec/year),
al page, the
when taking network redundancy into ac- ification, for the most part, is essential to outages caused by any hardware failure.
resource.
count. The availability requirement for ap- make the CGBP a stand-alone entity that
chnology,
can be integrated from a diverse and rich The CGBP Middleware Profile
and products plications providing service in a single network element can vary between 99.9% and COTS supplier ecosystem
Version 1.0
99.999% or better (five nines equates to unTo achieve the required high levels of
The Service Availability Forum (SA
availability of approximately 5 min/year).
service availability, application services are Forum) is the main organization active
The SCOPE Alliance has defined a built on top of the CGBP in a manner such in the middleware standardization effort.
reference architecture for a generic Carrier Grade Base Platform (CGBP) that is
Carrier Grade Platform
documented in a published technical popanies providing solutions now
sition paper available on the SCOPE Alration into products, technologies and companies. Whether your goal is to research the latest
liance Web site. This architecture, which
Operations and
lication Engineer, or jump to a company's technical page, the goal of Get Connected is to put you
Maintenance
includes
operating system, opice you require for
whateverhardware,
type of technology,
Application
and maintenance
functions and
ies and productserations
you are searching
for.
Tools
tools, also specifies CGBP Middleware
(or just “middleware” for short) as a funApplication
Application Services
damental component for service availServices
ability. This middleware is architecturally
positioned on top of the operating system
Carrier Grade Base Platform
but underlying higher level services such
Clustering, HA Services, Hardware Management,
Base
Platform
as databases, protocols and application
Software Management, Naming Services, Notification
Middleware
Services, Logging Services, etc.
servers. The functions of the middleware
Specialized
Operating System
include high-availability (HA) services,
Processing
Engines
Software Variation
hardware management, software man-
d
Hardware
Get Connected
24
Figure 1
August 2007
The SCOPE Alliance Carrier Grade Base Platform Reference architecture.
SOLUTIONS Engineering
EPIC form factor Core™2
Duo single board computer
NANO-9452
Socket M Intel® Core™2 Duo,
Core™ Duo/Solo with 667MHz FSB
Intel® 945GM + ICH7M chipset / DDR2 memory /
Dual Gigabit Network / Dual channel 18-bit LVDS
LCD panel / Compact Flash / IDE/SATA Hard
Drive support / USB/ RS-232
Fanless Intel 852GM
Celeron® M 1GHz
Embedded System
ECW-281
Intel ULV Celeron® M 1GHz
Therefore, initially the SCOPE Alliance
focused on profiling the existing SA Forum recommendations. The two cases to
consider in the SCOPE middleware profile were:
• What SA Forum-defined services
would be mandatory/desirable/niceto-have as supplied by middleware
product provided for NEPs to use in
constructing their own products?
• What middleware services should
third-party software vendors develop
against in their products in order to allow NEPs to integrate those products
with the CGBP middleware and the
rest of the system?
The most important SA Forum services in both lists were the Availability
Management Framework (AMF), Notification Service (NTF) and Logging
(LOG). The main difference was Cluster
Management (CLM): it is a key service
for a middleware product to provide, but
it is not mandatory that third-party software would subscribe to the same cluster
view. This profile is publicly available at
the SCOPE Alliance Web site.
The CGBP Middleware Profile
Version 2.0
Intel 852GM+ICH4 chipset / DDR memory / Dual
Gigabit network / 5xRS-232 & 1x RS-232/422/485
selectable / 9~36VDC available/ DIN mount & Wall
mount
15 inch All-in-one Panel PC
AFL-15A
l PC
15 inch Pane
reen
with touch sc
VIA C7 1.5GHz / DDR 2 memory / WLAN / 4x
USB / 2xGbE / 1x RS-232 / 1x RS-232/422/485 /
IP-64 protection
Embedded OS (Windows CE & XP Embedded)
support available
Visit IEI at booth 609 (IEI) & 601(AMD)
Date: 2007/9/18~2007/9/21
http://www.ieiworld.com
[email protected]
1-866-276-6754
Tel :1-909-595-2819
26
Untitled-2 1
August 2007
Fax: 1-909-595-2816
8/14/07 9:20:39 AM
While the CGBP Middleware Profile
Version 1.0 focused on the defined services, Version 2.0 now under construction will extend this to identify missing or
insufficient capabilities that NEPs would
like to see addressed by the SA Forum
and middleware providers. The initial focus of the SCOPE Alliance in the CGBP
middleware space has been in HA Services and closely related functionality.
• A few services provide useful capabilities but were not specified in
a way that would allow for a highperformance implementation. The
message service (MSG) is one such
example: while messaging could be
a very important integrating service
that a middleware provides, the current SA Forum messaging service
stipulates such high reliability that the
implementation cannot perform well
enough to yield cost-effective solutions. Therefore, high-performance
messaging is a clear gap.
• Another example is checkpointing:
many telecom applications require
very fast failover, which the current
SA Forum CKPT cannot provide for
some classes of applications.
• W hile notifications (NTF) are an important integrating service, the event
service (EVT) was not deemed important. The main reason is that NTF
defines semantics for the message,
while EVT does not. Thus, there is a
gap in the semantics for system-wide
event channels with defined syntax
and semantics.
• Completely missing capabilities that
were identified include trace, statistics
and measurements. These would provide a standard way to provide tracing
information and to collect middlewarelevel statistics or measurements.
• A cluster-level debugging service and
tools would be valuable to improve
NEP integration and development
activities. Such a capability, when
integrated with middleware, could,
for instance, stop component healthchecking while the system is stopped
for debugging.
• Mechanisms for handling overload
would be beneficial since this is a
big source of service outages. Defined services to detect, report and
manage overload conditions are
important framework capabilities.
While the policy of deciding what
to do during an overload is up to the
application, there can be a generic
service to collect the measurements,
report when an overload situation is
imminent, and provide a framework
for overload notification.
In summary, the SCOPE Alliance
has identified HA services as a key capability that NEPs would like to source from
an open COTS ecosystem. These services
take the form of the middleware component of the Alliance’s CGBP Reference architecture and are fundamental to achieve
stringent levels of service availability.
Through two distinct publications, the Alliance prioritizes and suggests necessary
extensions to the CGBP middleware services that have currently been defined by
the SA Forum.
The SCOPE Alliance.
[www.scope-alliance.org].
Sponsors
Contributors
Supporters
August 2007
27
solutions
engineering
high availability
Latest Specifications
from SA Forum Enhance
Middleware Services
New enhancements in the ongoing development of
standards-based middleware.
by A
sif Naseem
Service Availability Forum
T
he Service Availability Forum (SA
Forum) is a vendor consortium
dedicated to developing and promoting interface specifications that enable independent software vendors to develop standards-based service availability
middleware. Such middleware can then
be used to create systems that ensure continuous service availability.
The consortium provides two key sets
of Application Programming Interface
(API) specifications—the Application Interface Specification (AIS) and the Hardware Platform Interface (HPI).
When implemented, the Service
Availability Forum specifications provide
three major benefits:
1. The ability to discover, monitor and
manage the hardware resources in the
underlying platform in a manner that
is hardware independent. This is accomplished through the implementation of services specified by the HPI.
This results in the portability of the
HPI-compliant service availability
middleware across different hardware
platforms that provide HPI services.
2. Portability of AIS-compliant applications across multiple middleware implementations that provide services accessible via the interfaces specified by AIS.
3. Standardized access to management
capabilities of HPI and AIS services.
28
August 2007
The SA Forum regularly updates its
specification releases with enhancements
and interface specifications for new services. Its latest release offers a richer set
of features for both the AIS and the HPI,
while maintaining backward compatibility with previous SA Forum specifications. The latest AIS B.03 and HPI B.02
releases can be downloaded from the SA
Forum Web site.
The new services and enhanced features in AIS make the specification much
more intuitive for implementers. The new
services include a naming (NAM) service
and a timer (TMR) service. The naming
service provides a mechanism to associate
human-friendly names with objects, allowing users to look items up under their
given names. The timer service allows
a process to dynamically create a timer
object representing either absolute time
or a finite duration to get notified when
it expires. Some of the existing services
within AIS have been enhanced with new
manageability features and functional
updates. Furthermore, the SNMP MIBS
has been enhanced to comply with the updated specifications.
The existing services include Availability Management Framework (AMF),
Information Model Management (IMM),
Cluster Membership (CLM), Checkpointing (CKPT), Event (EVT), Messaging
(MSG), Lock (LCK), Logging (LOG) and
Notification (NTF).
The latest release also includes updates to the HPI specification with the introduction of new functionality for diagnostics and firmware update, respectively
called diagnostic management instrument
(DIMI) and firmware update management instrument (FUMI). Included in
the release is an improved introduction to
major HPI concepts and new functions to
simplify the management of the hardware
through entities. These updates and clarifications are based on input from users of
the existing specification.
The latest release offers a powerful
set of interface specifications to implementers planning to develop systems that
require continuous service availability in
the presence of failures.
The SA Forum plans to continue
to provide updates to its specifications
with new services as well as enhancements to existing ones. Some of the areas the Forum is actively addressing at
present include software management
framework, support for Java programming environment, security usage in
AIS services, and enhanced platform
management capabilities.
Service Availability Forum.
[www.saforum.org].
August 2007
29
FeaturedProducts
August 2007
ON
30
OS
CB T
BOOTH
501
added functionality. The two AMC slots can be used to host
the following configurations: processor AMC modules as
main controllers or for load balancing, storage AMC modules as mass storage devices for the Processor AMC, and
Network Processing Units for UDP/NAT or load balancing
processing AMCs in combination with storage AMCs. Thus,
with these two AMC slots the hub blade’s functionality can
be increased by using NPU-based AMCs supporting 10GbE
for NAT functionality directly on the hub blade. In combination with a general-purpose CPU-based AMC, all intelligence of the traffic management will reside on the hub,
including hot-swap capabilities, which frees up bandwidth to
the fabric interface to perform load balancing and network
access translation.
The Kontron AT8904 hub additionally enables redundant
10GbE interlinks between multiple ATCA chassis with the
Kontron AM4310 Mid-Size 10GbE Interlink AMC module, featuring 2x10GbE uplinks on the front panel via optical XFP connectors, which are routed to the XAUI ports (ports 4-7 and 8-11)
on the AMC connectors.
ES
Kontron America
Poway, CA.
(888) 294-4558.
[www.kontron.com].
OS
CB T
ON
Kontron has unveiled its triple 10-Gigabit AdvancedTCA
(ATCA) product portfolio that enables network equipment
providers (NEPs) and telecom equipment manufacturers
(TEMs) to accelerate their IMS and IPTV-oriented application system designs. All three are designed for Communications Platforms Trade Association (CP-TA) compliance. Together they reflect the demand in the industry for 10-Gigabit
Ethernet-based open modular systems that are appropriately
scalable and versatile to master the increasing traffic demands for IPTV-based media content and broadband media
servers that deliver Video on Demand (VoD) over FFTx, DSL
or cable TV networks.
The Kontron AT8030 processor board is designed with
three Intel Core2 Duo Low Voltage dual-core processors that
maintain an overall low-power envelope of 140W. Each CPU
core runs at 1.5 GHz and is paired with a dedicated set of
DDR memory, up to 8 Gbytes for one CPU core, and up to 4
Gbytes for each of the remaining two core processors. Each
CPU can be managed separately via IPMI and IPMC, and
can run an OS independently. With the combination of the
onboard GbE switch, multiple VLAN settings can be established with a capacity of 6GbE combined, and routed to one
of two 10GbE ports on the fabric interface. The node board
also supports PCI Express x4 to the one AMC mid-size slot
for added customization. The Kontron AT8030 is available
with the RTM8030, a rear transition module (RTM) that incorporates on-board one SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) HDD
with IPMI support.
The PICMG 3.0/3.1-compliant ATCA Kontron AT8404 carrier board has four mid-size AMC slots that support a range of
AMC modules, including TDM interfaces (E1/T1, STM-1, OC3),
NPUs, DSPs, Processor AMCs and Storage AMCs. The Kontron
AT8404 has redundant 10GbE on the fabric interface, and meets
the newly adopted AMC.0 rev 2, AMC.2 and AMC.3 PICMG
specifications. This includes 5x1GbE to each AMC with L2
switching support and direct AMC interconnect for PCI Express,
SRIO, 10GbE or SAS/SATA.
To meet the high traffic demands of IPTV-based “on demand” media content, the AT8904 ATCA 10GbE hub has
switching features and flexibility with two AMC slots for
ES
Triple 10-Gigabit ATCA Portfolio Targets Triple Play
IPTV-Based Broadband
BOOTHS
Embedded Systems Conference
September 18-21, 2007
Boston, MA
6U VPX GbE Multilayer Switch/Router Packs Dense Networking,
Security and Management
Announced as the first high-density 6U VPX Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) multilayer switch/router board, the VPX6-684 FireBlade II from Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing is
designed for rugged embedded aerospace and defense applications. The board is available with 12, 20 or 24 GbE ports and up
to 4x 10GbE ports and is suitable for system integrators developing secure high-performance IPv4/v6 Intra-Platform Networks
(IPNs). The board, which operates as either a fully managed or
an unmanaged switch/router, provides performance and configuration advantages to developers building Layer 2 or Layer 2/3+
networks. With support for a “de facto” industry-standard CLI,
the FireBlade II helps speed time-to-market by reducing set-up,
configuration and maintenance times.
The VPX6-684 FireBlade II extends the design of its 6U
VME predecessor, the SVME/DMV-682 FireBlade, with the
VPX (VITA 46) board architecture. Additional features include
support for routing up to 4x10GbE to the FireBlade’s P1 connector, and support for copper interfaces to the backplane for all of
the board’s 12, 20 or 24 GbE ports. The Layer 2/3+ management
and configuration software runs on the FireBlade’s Freescale
8245 Power Architecture processor.
The VPX6-684 FireBlade II is targeted for use in applications that require high levels of security. When used as a Unified
Threat Management (UTM) router, the VPX6-684 FireBlade II
provides strong perimeter defense via an ICSA-certified firewall.
Additional security features supported by the board include Access Control List (ACL) filtering, Network Address Translation
(NAT), Virtual Private Network (VPN) with tunneling support
(IPSec/L2TP), IPv6 ESP/AH payloads and Encryption/Decryption/Authentication support.
When configured with Curtiss-Wright’s PMC-110 Kryptonite mezzanine card, the FireBlade provides enhanced security
including Statefull firewall, NAT with Multicast support, VPN
support, IPSec and Crypto Engines. Statefull firewall can be
used to protect against various network attacks such as denial of
service (DoS). Cryptography, provided by the security engines
on the Freescale MPC8555E processor, can be used for encryption/decryption to protect data using algorithms such as AES256, 3DES. The Kryptonite PMC module can also perform Authentication using MD5 and SHA.
FireBlade’s switched Gigabit Ethernet architecture enables
system designers to easily inter-connect boxes, compute blades
and compute nodes within platforms. It’s ideal for deploying
COTS-based Gigabit Ethernet switching in harsh environments.
The VPX6-684 FireBlade II is available in both air-cooled and
conduction-cooled configurations. VPX-REDI (VITA 48)compliant 2-Level Maintenance versions of the board, which
can drastically reduce the costs of in-field maintenance, will
also be supported.
FireBlade’s set of network management interfaces includes CLI, Telnet, SNMP and Web for easy configuration and
network management. Additionally, complete layer 2 switching, layer 3 routing, Quality of Service (QoS), IP multicasting
and security software over either IPv4 or IPv6, extensive BIT
capability, and secure memory erase are supported to provide
a switching solution that can support the simplest to the most
complex network connections.
Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing
Leesburg, VA.
(613) 254-5112.
[www.cwcembedded.com].
August 2007
31
INDUSTRY
INSIGHT
DSP
SoftDSP Migrates
Toward DSP
RISC processors compete with DSPs in several consumer market
niches by increasing the Instruction Set Architecture overlap between
SoftDSP and DSP.
by Ilan D. Shallom
AudioCodes
D
SP and RISC share the following
three common architectural structures: instruction and data memory
separation, multilevel memories including caches, and pipelines for efficient instruction fetch end execution. In the first
of these architectural structures, both
DSP and RISC processors apply the wellknown Harvard architecture, which separates the program memory (instructions)
and the data memory. The major advantages of this concept are the de-correlating of the instruction fetch and data load/
store operations, a feature that enables
implementation of the pre-fetch strategy.
Due to instruction and data memory separation, an optimal selection of each one of
the memories is performed, i.e. optimization in sense of size, width of data bus and
address bus, access time, type, etc.
In the second structure, both processors use hierarchical, multilevel memories.
The use of two levels is most popular, which
takes the form of adding instruction cache
and data cache. The caches are on-chip
memories, and adding high-speed caches
can lead to major memory speed-up. This
means that the average access time per read/
write operation is much shorter than in the
case of a processor without a cache. Practically, memory speed-up depends highly on
the following: cache size, cache structure
32
August 2007
(N-Ways) and the policies used for block
replacement in case of a miss, both in read
and write. In addition, the memory speed
up measure is highly sensitive to the program nature and the way it’s aligned in the
main program memory.
The third architectural structure is an
instruction pipeline that is implemented
on most modern CPUs including DSPs
and RISCs. The basic assumption is that
the instructions are decomposable to a set
of basic operations that are executed serially. The supportive hardware is a pipeline, built from a set of data processing
elements connected in series, so that the
output of one element is the input of the
next one. The result is an increase in the
processor’s instruction throughput, i.e.,
the number of instructions that can be executed in a unit of time.
Digital signal processing algorithms
require by definition strong arithmetic capabilities. Basic operations such as add,
subtract, multiply, divide and their combinations such as multiply-add, must be
part of the DSP core ISA. A digital signal
processor’s major functionality includes
primarily fast and flexible multiply accumulate (MAC). The MAC instruction
appears extensively in matrix manipulations, such as convolution for filtering,
dot product and many other operations.
Another mandatory requirement is hardware support for a type of safeguard in
order to detect overflow or saturation after each arithmetic operation. Adding the
hardware-based saturation extensions to
the arithmetic instructions significantly
reduces instruction count, cutting cycles
CISC-based ISA
Memory access performed by
various instructions, including
advanced address manipulation.
Very long Instruction Word Compiler
based-parallelism.
Advanced DSP-oriented ISA
High-level parallelism architecture
- Multicore
- Multithread
Concurrency Tasks
Low-level parallelism architecture
- SIMD
- Superscalar
- Out of Order Execution
Basic DSP-oriented ISA
- MAC
- Saturation/Overflow
- Normalization
Harvard Architecture
Multi Level Memories
Pipeline Structure
RISC Load/Store ISA
SoftDSP RISC with a
DSP extension
DSP
Figure 1
The growing overlap
between DSP and Soft DSP.
INDUSTRY Insight
and lowering power consumption. In
many algorithm implementations there is
a requirement for normalization, which
permits the optimal usage of the finite
length of a computer word. The instruction, known as “count leading zeros,” supports the normalization requirement and
performs it efficiently (Figure 1).
The RISC architecture, while defining
the DSP enhancements, needs to meet three
major design goals. First, the extended core
performance must provide real-time execution of DSP tasks. Second, the enhanced
RISC core should preserve the original
clock frequency, in order to preserve both
general-purpose and DSP performance.
The third is to keep the die-size increase,
resulting from the DSP enhancement of the
core, minimal. The resultant processor is a
type of hybrid, a combination of generalpurpose processor (GPP) plus DSP capability marked as “SoftDSP” (or DSP free).
The DSP’s capabilities commonly adapted
to the SoftDSP instruction set architecture
are MAC and its variations, saturation/
overflow indication and handling, including normalization.
Another aspect to present in context
of the DSP versus SoftDSP is several architectural strategies that handle instruction parallelism, namely single instruction
multiple data (SIMD), superscalar architecture, out-of-order execution (OoOE)
and very long instruction word (VLIW).
The idea in SIMD is to execute the same
instruction (single) on many data entries,
such as vectors and matrices. Examples of
SIMD are instruction such as dual MAC
and quart MAC. Such types of parallelism reduce computing the dot product of
12 elements per vector, to six or four operations respectively.
A superscalar architecture executes
more than one instruction during a single
pipeline stage by pre-fetching multiple instructions and simultaneously dispatching
them to disused functional units on the
processor. Therefore a superscalar processor can be envisioned as having multiple
parallel pipelines, each of which is processing instructions simultaneously from a
single instruction thread. In a superscalar
architecture, the amount of execution units
is invisible to the instruction set. Each instruction encodes only one operation.
It was recently announced by one of
the major RISC core companies that the
DSPE
DSPE
DSPE
CORE 1
CORE 2
CORE N
I$
D$
I$
D$
I$
DSPE
D$
MT
Hardware
CORE
I$
MEMORY CONTROL
MEMORY CONTROL
MAIN MEMORY
MAIN MEMORY
D$
a
Figure 2
b
Multicore (a) and Multithread (b)
concept of out-of-order execution (OoOE)
had been adapted to its new RISC core architecture. The motivation to implement
OoOE is to make use of cycles that would
otherwise be wasted by avoiding a class
of stalls that occurs when the data needed
to perform an operation is not ready. The
OoOE procedure is based on the following sequences of operations: instruction
fetch and instruction is “posted” to an instruction queue, and then the instruction
is in a wait state until its input operands
are ready. Regardless of the original ordering of the instruction in the program,
as the instruction operands are available,
the instruction leaves the queue instantly
and is issued to the appropriate functional
unit for execution. The results, which are
out of original order, are queued, and only
after re-ordering all the older instructions
in the results queue, the current result is
written back to the register file.
The goal of VLIW was to increase
the ability of processors to execute instructions in parallel by using the compiler, rather than complex on-die circuitry,
to identify and leverage opportunities for
parallel execution. In contrast to the superscalar and out-of-order execution approaches, one VLIW instruction encodes
multiple operations; specifically, one instruction encodes at least one operation
for each execution unit of the device. For
example, if a VLIW device has three execution units, then a VLIW instruction for
that device would have three operation
fields, each field specifying what operation
should be done on that corresponding execution unit. In the VLIW the instructions
are rearranged for optimal parallel execu-
tion by the compiler, which is, by definition, ISA-oriented. Usually machines with
VLIW are featured with an instruction
word length of more then 64 bits in comparison to superscalar machines in which
the instruction word length is limited to
32 bits or less. The VLIW technologies
are not implemented yet in the SoftDSP
architecture (Figure 1).
Increase Speed for a Given
Frequency with Existing
Resources
Multithreading and multicore architectures are both designed for speeding
up the processor in which they are implemented. The architectures support high
level parallelism by aiming towars concurrency in program execution. In most
of the applications there is some degree
of concurrency. At least part of the time,
there are two or more independent tasks
that need to be executed. Recently, new
approaches adapted from the PC processor, known as multithreading and multicore processing, are entering embedded
processors. These new approaches bring
the parallelism era to the embedded and
SoftDSP cores as well, and introduce better performance.
Multicore systems exploit concurrency to spread work around a system.
This can be used to improve absolute
performance, cost or power/performance.
Clearly, once one has built the fastest
single processor possible in a given technology, the only way to get even more
computational power is to use more than
one core (Figure 2a). In many applications it is often possible to analyze and
August 2007
33
INDUSTRY Insight
decompose an application program into
specialized tasks, and assign tasks across
multiple cores, each of which has a specific responsibility, and each of which can
be specified and configured optimally for
that specific job.
Multithreaded processors also exploit the concurrency of multiple tasks,
but in a different way, and for a different
reason. Instead of a system-level technique to spread CPU load, multithreading
is a core-level optimization to improve
area and energy efficiency (Figure 2b).
A multithreaded architecture is driven
to a large degree by the observation that
single-threaded high-performance processors spend a surprising amount of
time doing nothing. When the results of
a memory access are required for a pro-
gram to advance, and that access must
reference RAM whose cycle time is tens
of times slower than that of the processor,
a single-threaded processor is condemned
to stall until the data is returned. The
multithreading hypothesis can be stated
as: if latencies prevent a single task from
keeping a processor pipeline busy, then a
single pipeline should be able to complete
more than one concurrent task in less time
than it would take to run the tasks serially.
The principle is to conduct context\thread
switch when a pipeline stall is detected.
Multicore processing here refers to
multiple cores running single code divided to tasks that use the same main
memory. This multiprocessing approach
also exploits the fact that processing tasks
are divisible and can run concurrently, but
on different cores and caches. Obviously
the speed-up factor is roughly the number
of cores running in parallel. In the case
of multi-threading, the performance improvement is much more complicated to
evaluate. The speed-up of a multithread
core depends on the program nature, especially the amount of stalls, in particular
memory stalls, and the size and structure
of each case.
The parameters that must be taken
into account for multithreading or multicore selection include processor total
speed-up factor, how the work-to-stall ratio reflects processor efficiency factor, die
size and power consumption.
The migration to multithread and
multicore architectures requires the DSP
programmer to run in a multitasking OS
and convert programs from a single processing thread into a multiple threads
program. Multithreading and multicore
processing performance improvement is
limited by the pipeline structure, maximal utilization of execution units and the
caches connected to the core.
Multithreading a single processor can
only improve performance up to the level
where the execution units are saturated.
However, up to that limit, it can provide
a significant payback for the investment
in die size. It might be said, from the
standpoint of area and energy efficiency,
that the optimal solution would be the use
of multithreaded cores as basic processing elements, and to replicate them in a
multicore configuration if the application
demands more performance than a single
core can provide.
In an embedded system aimed at the
consumer market, it is optimal to use a
single chip using a standard SoftDSP core
with re-written software that eliminates
the external DSP. In the VoIP application,
it results in some kind of a Soft VoIP implementation that combines the functionality of the dual-chip GPP&DSP approach
with the benefits of a single chip. It enables
system developers to create solutions with
shorter development times, a single code
base, a limited need for development tools,
and ease of design portability.
AudioCodes
Lod, Israel.
+972-3-976-4000.
[www.audiocodes.com].
34
August 2007
Photographer: Remco Frank
What Do These Embedded Applications
Have In Common?
Each embedded application is unique. That’s why VersaLogic offers an extensive line of embedded products with
choices of size, performance, and features. That’s also why VersaLogic works closely with customers to tailor
standard products to meet their needs. Product customization is available in quantities as low as 100 pieces!
More importantly, embedded customers have many common needs. Meticulous quality standards, dedicated
customer support, and reliable product delivery are just a few that VersaLogic provides. That’s why customers from a
wide range of industries rely on VersaLogic for their embedded computer needs.
Could you use uncommonly-good support? Call today to see if your unique application is a good match with
VersaLogic’s unique approach to service and support. We may have more in common than you think!
Call 800-824-3163. Visit www.VersaLogic.com.
Rated a “Platinum Vendor”
by Venture Development
Corporation (2002-2006) for
excellence in customer service.
(800) 824-3163 • [email protected]
Software
&
development TOolS
Fault Management
Interoperable Firmware
Upgrades for PICMG
Management Controllers
A specification-based upgrade process for hardware platform
management means that firmware upgrades can be done in systems
across components from multiple vendors.
by M
ark Overgaard
Pigeon Point Systems
36
August 2007
If all the IPM controllers in a shelf are HPM.1-compliant, a
single HPM.1-compliant upgrade agent can upgrade the firmware
in all the controllers, even if each element of the system is implemented by a different vendor, including the shelf managers and
the upgrade agent, itself.
HPM.1 IPM controllers must support upgrades over IPMB0 or IPMB-L, but can also support any other IPMI interface for
this purpose. One popular option is the payload interface that
1
AdvancedTCA
Shelf Manager
MicroTCA
Shelf Manager
Upgrade Agent
Shelf-Carrier
Manager Interface
IPMC
Carrier
IPMC
Carrier
Manager
MCMC
IPMB-L
A
IPMB-0
IPMB-0
EMMC
IPMB-L
A recently adopted PICMG specification addresses an important gap that had existed in the PICMG hardware platform
management (HPM) architecture: there was no spec-defined way
to upgrade the firmware on management controllers. As a result,
AdvancedTCA (ATCA) and MicroTCA systems built from a mix
of components from different vendors could need a mix of incompatible firmware upgrade tools.
HPM.1, the Intelligent Platform Management Controller
(IPMC) firmware upgrade specification, closes that gap for all the
board and module level management controller types defined in
the ATCA, MicroTCA and AdvancedMC (AMC) architectures.
This specification is the first in what will likely be a series of
PICMG specifications covering hardware platform management
aspects of all three architectures. Even though this specification
was developed in the PICMG 3.0 subcommittee, it is immediately applicable to the other two architectures as well.
Figure 1 shows the overall vision for HPM.1 firmware upgrades, which includes the board- and module-level controllers.
Collectively referenced as IPM controllers in HPM.1, these also
include AMC carrier IPMCs and module management controllers
(MMCs), plus MicroTCA carrier management controllers (MCMCs) and enhanced MMCs (EMMCs). It also covers the ATCA and
MicroTCA shelf managers that provide access to their respective
types of shelves. HPM.1 was not engineered to cover upgrading of
shelf manager firmware, which is usually substantially larger than
board-level controller firmware. An upgrade agent applies HPM.1
upgrade images to the appropriate controllers by communicating
with those controllers, often via the shelf managers and the intervening in-shelf buses, such as IPMB-0 and/or IPMB-L.
B
B
MMC
MMC
Header
Action 1
Header
Action 1
Data
Data
Action 2
Action 2
Upgrade
Images
Data
Action 3
Action 4
Payload Interface
PAYLOAD
Upgrade Agent
2
PAYLOAD
Upgrade Transfer Options:
1 RMCP indirect via Shelf Manager
2 IPMI Direct over Payload Interface
Figure 1
An HPM.1 upgrade agent can upgrade firmware
in any HPM.1-compliant IPM controllers (via any
IPMI interface) in ATCA/AMC or MicroTCA/AMC
configurations.
All the cards...
…for all the solutions
Bringing P.A. Semi to PMC, Extreme Engineering Solutions introduces the XPedite8000, the highestperformance, lowest-power PrPMC (Processor PMC) solution available today. With the P.A. Semi
PA6T-1682 integrated platform processor, the XPedite8000 offers:
• Dual 2.0-GHz Power Architecture processor cores.
• Two independent DDR2 SDRAM channels for maximum bandwidth.
• Two front-panel Gigabit Ethernet ports.
• Two PTMC-compliant P14 Gigabit Ethernet ports.
• PCI /PCI-X PMC interface operating at up to 133 MHz.
• Linux, VxWorks, and QNX support.
For customers looking for one vendor to provide the
complete system solution, X-ES provides full
component selection, operating system
support and integration services.
www.xes-inc.com
www.xes-inc.com
©2006 Extreme Engineering
Solutions
[email protected]
©2007 Extreme Engineering Solutions
Software&DevelopmentTools
links the IPM controller to the main processor(s) on a board. In
this scenario, an upgrade agent could execute directly on a payload processor and communicate directly with an IPM controller
over the payload interface. Figure 1 shows this option for the two
MMCs, as an example.
Each upgrade image identifies the type (including the implementer and compatible version range) of IPM controllers it can be
applied to. IPM controllers can identify themselves in these same
dimensions. As a result, an independently implemented upgrade
agent can apply firmware images of different types (for example,
types A and B in Figure 1) to appropriate IPM controllers (for
example, type A IPMCs and type B MMCs in Figure 1).
In addition to a descriptive header, each upgrade image includes a sequence of upgrade action records, some of which may
include data, which is typically the new firmware to be uploaded.
An upgrade agent communicates via HPM.1-defined IPMI commands with an IPM controller that is a candidate for upgrade and,
for a compatible upgrade image and controller pair, proceeds to
affect the upgrade actions on the controller.
Key Requirements
In addition to multi-vendor interoperability, the developers of
HPM.1 in PICMG identified and achieved the following requirements for the firmware upgrades supported by this new facility:
• Reliable: an IPM controller can store redundant firmware images and automatically fall back to the prior image if it de-
tects that a newly uploaded image has a serious error or loses
connection to the upgrade agent. HPM.1 encourages and provides infrastructure for self-tests that the IPM controller can
execute to validate a newly uploaded image.
• On-line: an IPM controller can accept a new firmware image
while continuing to perform its normal management functions, executing a previously installed image.
• Deferrable: new firmware can be uploaded, but not activated
until some later time, perhaps after all needed downloads are
done and the system is in a low load period.
• Flagged payload effects: IPM controllers and upgrade images indicate whether an upgrade can affect the payload of
the parent field replaceable unit; any such impact should be
the rare exception, but may not be entirely avoidable. It may
be critical for the upgrade agent and/or its operator to know
whether an upgrade operation could require, for example, a
reset of the payload.
• Multi-component: an IPM controller can apply upgrades to
other low-level elements of a board, such as an FPGA.
• Flexible implementation: an HPM.1-compliant IPM controller may not implement any of the above features, perhaps because it is a very low-cost implementation that doesn’t require
such features or because it was initially implemented before
the advent of HPM.1 and is being retrofitted for HPM.1 compliance.
• Self-describing: IPM controllers and upgrade images identify
the features they support, so that an upgrade agent and its
operator can adjust upgrade scenarios to fit.
Upgrade Process
Check IPMC &
upgrade image
identificatoin
Check Failed
Check IPMC &
upgrade image
capabilities
Check Failed
Check Failed
Check properties
for next component
All components checked,
proceed with upgrade
Figure 2
38
Abandon
Upgrade
Preparation stage: confirming that the properties
of the target IPM controller and the selected
upgrade image are compatible.
August 2007
An HPM.1 upgrade for a particular upgrade image and a particular IPM controller includes three stages: preparation, upgrade
and activation. Figures 2, 3 and 4 show these stages. Note that activation can be deferred (if supported by the IPM controller), and
therefore may occur long after the corresponding upgrade stage.
The identification check step in the preparation stage confirms that the target controller and upgrade image have the same
manufacturer and device type, as well as suitability of the current
firmware revision for upgrading by this image.
The subsequent capabilities check step can cover compatibility topics (for instance, that both image and controller support
manual rollback if one of them supports only that recovery option) as well as upgrade policy topics (such as an operations policy that controllers will only be upgraded if they support deferred
activations). In addition, the upgrade agent collects data that will
guide its later upgrade actions, such as the IPM controller’s estimates of the maximum time it needs for key operations.
Finally in the preparation stage, similar checks are made for
compatibility at the component level (for example, the new FPGA
load, versus the new microcontroller firmware). These checks include confirming that the number and identity of the components
in the image are compatible with the components supported by
the IPM controller. The upgrade process next enters the upgrade
stage, as shown in Figure 3.
In the upgrade stage, the upgrade agent proceeds sequentially through the upgrade action records in the upgrade image.
The IPM controller developer provides the image and takes re-
Mass Storage Modules
for VMEbus and CompactPCI®
Process next upgrade
action record
Backup or prepare
components
Upload component
firmware blocks
PMC CompactFlash Module
All upgrade action records processed,
upgrade complete
Figure 3
Two Type I/ Type II CF Sockets
See the full line of Mass Storage Products at
Upgrade stage: applying the upgrade actions from
the upgrade image to the IPM controller.
www.RedRockTech.com
sponsibility for ensuring that the upgrade actions are appropriate
for the target controller. If necessary, the image includes explicit
steps to backup an existing image or perform implementationspecific preparation for the upgrade. Then, the upgrade agent uploads the blocks of upgrade data in an upgrade action record to edrock_04.indd
the IPM controller. The upgrade data is opaque to the upgrade
agent, so the detailed structure of that data can be completely
different between different IPM controller vendors without affecting HPM.1 upgrade interoperability.
After the upgrade agent completes the uploading process, it
activates the new firmware, as shown in Figure 4. For IPM controllers that support deferred upgrades, the upgrade agent may
delay activation until some later time of its choosing. The activation step is not triggered by an upgrade action record; the upgrade agent or its operator decides when to activate an upgraded
controller.
IPM controllers optionally include a self-test function that
is invoked automatically as the final step of activating new firmware, independent of whether the activation is deferred or not.
This function can include, for instance, checks of the controller’s
memory and its key peripherals. The upgrade agent knows from
its earlier capabilities checks whether the IPM controller implements a self-test function and a maximum for the time the selftest will take. If the self-test passes, the IPM controller proceeds
into operation with the new firmware. If the self-test fails, the
IPM controller can automatically roll back to the previous firmware or the upgrade agent can initiate a manual rollback. In either
case, the IPM controller proceeds with operation on the previous
firmware.
Untitled-5 1
or call Toll-Free: 800-808-7837
Red Rock Technologies, Inc. 480-483-3777
1
2/2/07 1:21:52 PM
August 2007
39
8/13/07 5:30:17 PM
Activate firmware &
optionally self-test
Implementation Experience
Self-test
supported
Self-test in
progress
Check self-test
results
Self-test failed,
no auto-rollback
Self-test not supported
Self-test failed,
auto-rollback
Initiate manual
rollback
Rollback in
progress
Self-test
passed
Check rollback
status
Continue with
new or rolled back
firmware in effect
Figure 4
Activating and optionally self-testing the new
firmware, rolling back to the previous firmware if
necessary.
1
40Untitled-2 August
2007
Though HPM.1 was just adopted in May 2007, several independent hardware platform management subsystem developers
have already done initial implementations. As part of their work
with HPM.1, Kontron took the initiative to add HPM.1 upgrade
agent support to the popular open source IPMItool utility (www.
ipmitool.sourceforge.org). At least one Tier 1 TEM is already integrating upgrade agent functionality into their system management application.
Pigeon Point’s several years of experience with supplying
IPM controller upgrade facilities was a strong input into the development of HPM.1. With HPM.1 compliance, these facilities
are now even stronger, including several important new features.
Upgrades can now be accomplished over any IPMI interface of
the IPM controller, including the payload interface. Online upgrades allow normal operation of the IPM controller to continue
while new firmware is uploaded. Deferred upgrades allow system
operators to decouple uploading of new firmware and activating
it, so that both can be done at an appropriate time. The bootloader,
a special firmware module that executes when a controller comes
out of reset, can now be upgraded as an HPM.1 component.
Pigeon Point Systems
Scotts Valley, CA.
(831)438-1565.
[www.pigeonpoint.com].
7/31/07 9:14:53 AM
&TECHNOLOGY
Products
Graphics PMC Pulls Together Advanced
Features
Built around the Carmine MB86297 GPU, the third generation of high-end graphics products developed by Fujitsu, a new
COTS graphics PMC provides multiple features including geometry processing for 2D/3D graphics, pixel processing hardware
and video capture. The IC-GRA-PMCa from ACT/Technico is an
IEEE 1386-compliant PMC that also offers 3D performance of up
to 10 Mpolygons/s, the highest rendering performance available in
the embedded market, with the lowest power consumption.
The IC-GRA-PMCa features a 128 Mbyte DDR memory at
266 Mbits/s, two video output channels with resolutions of up to
1280 × 1024 pixels at 60 Hz and multiple interfaces (DVI, VGA,
RGsB, STANAG). Each digital video output port allows transparent processing, such as an overlay display up to eight layers and
alpha planes for four layers. The IC-GRA-PMCa has a DVI 1.0compliant digital interface or a VGA-compatible interface. The
VGA interface can be routed on the DVI-I connector or PN4 I/O
connector through a video multiplexer.
Two video inputs support an SVGA capture resolution. The
board has two CVBS/S-Video/YUV capture interfaces. A video
decoder automatically detects and converts standard analog signals compatible with established NTSC, PAL and SECAM video
broadcast standards.
Current software support is available for Linux-based platforms with support for VxWorks and other operating systems
available upon request. The board will be manufactured and supported for a minimum of five years. Pricing starts at $2,500 per
unit. A conduction-cooled version is also available.
ACT/Technico, Warminster, PA. (215) 956-1200.
[www.acttechnico.com].
Non-Intrusive Recording of High-Throughput
Data to Distributed Real-Time Systems
A software solution for logging the high-throughput data, events
and messages that drive the behavior of distributed real-time applications can be used for future analysis and debugging, regulatory compliance, and replay for testing and simulation purposes. RTI Recorder
from Real-Time Innovations is designed to be non-intrusive and can
record high-rate data arriving in real time while having minimal impact
on system behavior. RTI Recorder can record about 15,000 messages
per second with a message size of up to 256 bytes.
Uses of RTI Recorder include:
• Financial trading – Recording market data, analytic results and
trade decisions so that algorithm and real-time performance can
be analyzed and optimized, providing playback for testing software and algorithm updates, and demonstrating best execution
per regulatory requirements such as Reg NMS and MiFID
• Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance – Recording data
for post-mission analysis, particularly when network connectivity
is not available during a mission, is unreliable, or is not of sufficient bandwidth to stream available data in real time
• Combat management – Recording of mission or exercise data for
later analysis, testing of system upgrades and optimizations, and
simulation
In addition to user data, RTI Recorder can log system data and
metadata, such as when applications join or leave a system, which Quality-of-Service (QoS) settings each application uses and microsecondresolution timestamps for each message and data update. This provides
tremendous visibility into system behavior and allows developers and
system engineers to optimize efforts based on real-world performance.
Recorded data is stored in a platform-independent file format and can be
accessed using an included SQL interpreter or converted into popular,
interoperable file formats such as Comma Separated Value (CSV). RTI
Recorder is available for $24,000.
OS
CB T
ON
ES
Real-Time Innovations, Santa Clara, CA. (408) 200-4700.
[www.rti.com].
BOOTHS
42
August 2007
Embedded Systems Conference
September 18-21, 2007
Boston, MA
4-Axis Stepping and Servo Motion Control Card with
Modularized Design
ES
ON
A 4-axis pulse train modularized motion control card for controlling steppers, servos and linear
motors delivers high-frequency pulse rates of up to 6.55 MHz. The PCI-8154 from Adlink Technology
also features a hardware-controlled emergency stop to terminate movement in case of system malfunction, a software security protection to prevent illegal copying of custom software, and a card index
switch to support multiple cards in a single system.
The card is compatible with Mitsubishi, Panasonic and Yaskawa servos and steppers, the PCI-8154
allows for movement through multiple axes with linear and circular interpolations using continuous
OS
contouring thus providing smooth motion control for a wide-range of manufacturing applications. The
CB T
PCI-8154 also offers 13 homing modes to support a variety of applications, backlash compensation for
BOOTH
improved movement accuracy, and performs simultaneous starting and stopping of multiple axes in a
1716
single card or multiple card configurations.
The modularized design of the PCI-8154 supports extension boards that can be attached for distributed I/O control, high-speed triggering and ECAM control. Combining centralized 4-axis motion control and distributed I/O via the extension
board simplifies integration by reducing controller requirements. With a high-speed triggering extension board, the triggering output frequency can
reach 2 MHz and the onboard SDRAM can store many more compare points, making it ideal for high line rate line scan applications. Pricing starts
at $850 with volume discounts available.
Adlink Technology, Irvine, CA. (949) 727-2099. [www.adlinktech.com]. Series of Media Processing Modules
Provides Voice Quality for VoP NEMs
A series of PTMC media gateway modules offers a set
of VoP features that carrier and enterprise VoIP and VoATM
media gateway manufacturers require. The OCT9400 series from Octasic is designed to be a building block to reduce time-to-market. Powered by Octasic’s carrier-grade
OCT6100 echo cancellation and OCT8304 packetization/
aggregation devices, these modules deliver
voice quality and advanced packet-handling capabilities.
The OCT9400 Series of modules provides a low-cost, scalable
solution that offers excellent
voice quality and that includes low bit rate codecs
such as G.729AB and
fax and modem transport. With features fully
enabled at power-up, the
OCT9400 is an autonomous addition to an OEM solution.
The OCT9400 Series of PTMC media gateway modules
for compressed VoP offers densities up to 672 voice channels
with 128 ms tail echo cancellation on all channels. Advanced
voice features include conferencing, G.729AB, G.723.1, T.38,
tone detection, message playback and Caller ID. The module is also available with MEGACO (H.248) pre-loaded.
OctWare, a subsidiary of Octasic, provides software solutions
for VoIP end-user communication equipment. Its flagship
product, SoftEcho, is optimized for softphones, Asterisk IP
PBXs, IP & speaker phones, handheld devices and Integrated
Access Devices (IAD).
Octasic, Montreal, Canada. (514) 282-8858.
[www.octasic.com].
Fanless Industrial Computer Powered by Geode
LX800
An industrial computer with a compact footprint that allows customers to mount the unit in the most convenient location is powered
by the low-power AMD Geode LX800 processor running at 500 MHz.
It can be mounted to walls, under counters,
on tabletops, or to DIN
rails using
available
optional
brackets.
The Relio
R1300 from
Sealevel Systems boasts fanless
operation, which significantly improves reliability in industrial environments where dust and airborne particulates are present.
Plus, the fanless Relio R1300 is rated to operate from 0° to 50°C, which
accommodates harsh industrial environments.
To achieve maximum reliability customers can opt for a solid-state
solution by operating from CompactFlash. The Relio R1300 supports
both XP Embedded and embedded Linux operating systems. Customers
using Windows XP programs can engage Sealevel technical support to
assist in migrating applications to the XPe platform. Customers requiring disk storage can select optional high-temperature hard drives.
Standard I/O features include two 10/100BaseT Ethernet, four USB
2.0 ports, 8-bit GPIO, a parallel printer port and four serial ports. Local or remote I/O expansion is available using Sealevel SeaI/O modules that are available in numerous configurations including optically
isolated inputs, Reed and Form C relay outputs, TTL interfaces, A/D,
and D/A. The Relio R1300 communicates with SeaI/O devices using
Modbus RTU allowing one or more SeaI/O modules to be located with
the computer or remotely up to 4,000 feet. The Relio R1300 base price
is $679 and product is available for shipping.
Sealevel Systems, Liberty, SC. (864) 843-4343. [www.sealevel.com].
August 2007
43
Products&TECHNOLOGY
Data Acquisition Analog Outputs with Isolated
Grounds; No Phase Errors
Handheld Terminals Support Bar Code
A new data acquisition processor (DAP) board can eliminate two
and RFID for a Seamless Logistics
serious potential problems - ground currents and phase errors—from
Solution
analog outputs in applications. The MSXB 076 from Microstar LaboraWith a secure built-in wireless module, a set of motories includes eight single-ended analog outputs with an isolated ground
bile terminals is designed to significantly improve logistics
for each output. Eight boards in a 19-inch rack-mountable industrial enoperations. Operators can easily access real-time data from
closure can connect to a single DAP board. Additionally, multiple DAP
warehouse management systems, giving them the capabilboards can work together in a PC and across a network as a synchroity to immediately locate and identify stocks. Support for
nized system. MSXB 076 boards, as output boards, do not themselves
1D/2D barcode protocols and RFID enables massive volumes
include signal conditioning. They do, however, share significant aspects
of data capture, making improved efficiency and productivof the new engineering design implemented in the input boards in the
ity in warehouse management a reality. Manufacturers with
signal-conditioning family that they complement. Specifically, they ofhuge warehouse inventories need monitorfer high signal density, they enable high channel counts, they include
ing systems for tracking production
an isolated ground for each channel, and they allow for simultaneous
for each day. Usually this requires
updates across all channels.
recording all materials in a host
MSXB 076 boards slot into a backplane in a standard industrial
database, and assigning each item
enclosure like other signal-conditioning products that conform to the
Get Connected with technology and
assigned its own control number.
external hardware specifications
of the Microstar
channel
companies
providingLaboratories
solutions now
However, with large numbers of
architecture. A backplane connector on each board connects it to a digiGet Connected is a new resource for further exploration employees accessing the database,
tal backplane factory-fitted into
the
industrial
enclosure.
An
interface
into products, technologies and companies. Whether your goal
such a system can become exboard that also plugs intoisthe
backplane
receives
digitized
waveforms
to research
the latest
datasheet
from a company,
speak directly
from a DAP board in
a PC.
with
an Application Engineer, or jump to a company's technical page, the tremely error-prone.
goal of Get Connected is to put you in touch with the right resource.
The Advantech MARS-1030, a
Whichever level of service you require for whatever type of technology, portable data terminal bundled with
Get Connected will help you connect with the companies and productsa proprietary data collection system
you are searching for.
along with a wireless link, can solve
all these problems. A handheld terminal can simplify the daily work
of operators by providing comprehensive data collection capability
and instantaneous processing, all
the while offering genuine mobilGet Connected with technology and companies providing
ity on solutions
the job. now
Operators can apply
Get Connected is a new resource for further exploration into products,
technologies
Whether
yourproduction
goal is to research
the latest
barcode scanners and
or companies.
RFID, both
on the
line and
datasheet from a company, speak directly with an Application Engineer,
or jump
to a company's
page, the
goal of
Get for
Connected
in the
warehouse.
With technical
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when
parts
compo- is to put you
in touch with the right resource. Whichever level of service you require for whatever type of technology,
nents are incorrectly mapped to the wrong production line,
Get Connected will help you connect with the companies and products you are searching for.
the system automatically generates a warning message, alwww.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected
lowing the operator to quickly note and rectify the mistake.
Every DAP board includes an onboard processor running a realAlso, after line operators access and request materials, the
time operating system, which Windows applications that support DLL
accounting system is automatically alerted of any shortfalls
calls can communicate with and control. DAP boards also commuin remaining stocks, thereby anticipating the time required
nicate among themselves independently of Windows to synchronize
to order additional supplies. When the central host system retheir clocks with one another. They then all work synchronously as
ceives the alert messages through a wireless link, the factory
a networked data acquisition system. The MSXB 076 board is priced
manager can quickly place real-time orders for new materiat $695.
als and parts, according to the manufacturing schedule. The
Microstar Laboratories, Bellevue, WA. (425) 453-2345.
planning process for production line management becomes
[www.mstarlabs.com].
much more efficient and far less stressful than ever before.
The MARS-1030 comes in two versions, the MARS-1030N
numeric keypad version priced at $950, and the MARS-1030F
Get Connected with companies and
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full alphanumeric
keypad version priced at $1,100.
Ad Index
Products
products featured in this section.
End of Article
Advantech,
Irvine, CA. (949) 789-7178.
[www.advantech.com].
Get Connected with companies and products featured in this section.
44
August 2007
PC/104 Plus and PC/104
Express SBCs for Full Industrial
Temperature Range
OS
CB T
ON
ES
A new single board computer line for
highly demanding, embedded applications from
Fastwel is designed in PC/104-Plus (CPC1600)
and PC/104-Express (CPC1700) formats. The
boards feature Intel Pentium M processors up
to 2.0 GHz and with a 533 MHz front side bus.
The 82915GM Chipset and ICH6 dual-channel
memory interface provide for access to up to 1
BOOTH
913
6U CompactPCI Express Core Duo-Based CPU Board
A 6U CompactPCI Express (CPCIe) Core Duo
1.66 GHz CPU Board features front panel IO with
standard interfaces including two Gigabit Ethernet
ports, two Serial ATA ports, four USB 2.0 ports,
one RS-232 port and activity LEDs. It also includes
a SXGA-compatible display interface and onboard
Compact Flash interface. The CPU board supports up
to 4 Gbytes of DRAM.
The board can accept up to four Gbytes of PC23200 registered DIMM and supports 1280 x1024
SXGA graphics via a high-density D-sub 15-pin female connector. According to One Stop president
Steve Cooper, the 6U processor with all the features
of standard CPCI and the bandwidth of PCI Express
is the first of several CPCIe CPU boards One Stop
Systems will introduce this year. The board provides
basic tools for developers and a solid work engine for
high-speed applications. The 6U CPCIe IntelCore Duo
CPU Board lists for $4,595.
One Stop Systems, Escondido, CA.
(760) 745-9883. [www.onestopsystems.com].
Gbyte of PC4200 DDR2. A conduction-cooling solution provides effective heat dissipation
from CPU and GMCH to external enclosure
to ensure fan-free operation through the full
industrial temperature range of -40° to +85°C.
All components including CPU and memory
are soldered on board to provide reliability in
high shock/vibration environments.
A video system supports two independent
displays, CRT or flat panel and an LVDS interface; resolution is up to 2048 × 1536. Peripheral
devices can be connected to the boards through
four high-speed USB 2.0 channels. Input/output
capabilities can be expanded by means of additional features: for CPC1600 a 32-bit, 33 MHz
(3.3/5V) PCI interface, for CPC1700 a x4 PCI
Express interface. Two Gigabit Ethernet channels and 16-bit ISA interface make these SBCs
perfect for developing communication and
I/O-intensive applications and most suitable for
use in compact computing systems in ground
vehicles, ships, aircraft and other vibration- and
shock-intensive environments, as well as in industrial applications.
Additional reliability of CPC1600 and
CPC1700 is provided by a hardware monitoring subsystem, watchdog timer and reserved
copy of BIOS in CMOS memory. The boards
are available in two versions—for industrial
temperature range (-40° to +85°C) and for
commercial temperature range (0° to +70°C).
We Listen. Think. And Create.
Distributed
I/O
Digital
I/O
SeaLINK USB serial
adapters are the fastest,
most reliable way to
connect peripherals to any
USB-equipped computer.
Serial
I/O
Industrial
Computing
HMI
SeaLINK USB Serial Adapters Provide:
• 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16-Port Models
• RS-232, RS-422, and RS-485
Serial Interfaces
• Data Rates to 921.6K bps
• State Machine Architecture to
Reduce Host Processor Overhead
• Operation as Standard COM Ports to
the Host Computer
• Lifetime Warranty
F CUS
On Success
Fastwel, Brooklyn, NY. (718) 554-3686.
[www.fastwel.com].
Untitled-2 1
AM
August7/3/07
2007 10:09:49 45
Products&TECHNOLOGY
Pentek, Upper Saddle River, NJ. (201) 818-5900. [www.pentek.com].
Compact, Versatile Embedded Web Controller
An embedded Web controller module specially designed for industrial control and
communications includes processor, RAM and flash memory along with a number of
serial interfaces, system clock generation and GPIO. The IPC@CHIP SC23 from BeckIPC addresses applications that benefit from the use of a pluggable embedded module for
convenience in manufacturing and service. The module combines an SC186 processor at
96 MHz with 8 Mbyte RAM and 2 Mbyte flash with its pluggable DIL32 housing. The
3.3V design reduces the current
consumption and the parallel address/data bus was replaced with
a modern and fast SPI and I2C bus
interface. RS232/TTL interfaces
are provided as usual and 17
GPIO pins enable the direct control of
the local I/Os.
In addition there are 2xCAN2.0 interfaces with optional CANopen stack,
a USB 1.1 Host/Device interface, a 1x
hardware SPI and a 1x hardware I2C interface. The module
includes 17 GPIO lines, three interrupt inputs and two programmable hardware timers. A
development kit, the DK55, will be provided to enable fast entry and an immediate start on
your application development.
The DK55 development kit will be available in December 2007. The SC23 will be supplied as a series product from January 2008. Preliminary versions of the development kit
and SC23 samples are already planned for October 2007.
Beck IPC, Pohlheim, Germany. +49 6404 695-225. [www.beck-ipc.com].
46
August 2007
A new Mini-ITX mainboard based on the
VIA CX700 system media processor incorporates a number of features for the x86-based
embedded market, such as greater device performance, clearer definition video and storage
technologies, and an I/O set including two
LAN ports and native support for two LVDS
OS
CB T
ON
A 2.2 GHz clock, synch and gate distribution board for synchronizing multiple I/O modules facilitates sampling and timing for a wide range of multichannel,
high-speed data acquisition, DSP and software-radio applications. Configured as
a 6U VME board, the Model 6890 from Pentek synchronizes up to eight modules,
each receiving a common clock up to 2.2 GHz along with timing signals for synchronizing, triggering and gating functions. The Model 6890 currently supports
Pentek’s Model 6826 Dual 2 GHz, 10-bit A/D Converter VME board.
The Model 6826 features single- or dual-channel data acquisition at 2 Gsamples/second with 10-bit resolution using the Atmel AT84AS008 A/D device. By
accepting single-ended transformer or DC-coupled inputs, the board preserves
signal integrity across a variety of analog signal sources. The AT84AS008 combines dynamic performance, compactness and ease of use to speed system development with Pentek’s high-performance VME board.
Developed specifically to address the critical timing needs of synchronous
multichannel data acquisition and DSP systems, the Model 6890 board simplifies
system integration tasks. For example, when combined with eight Model 6826
Dual-Channel 2 GHz, 10-bit A/D Modules, the resulting system provides 16 A/D
converters all sampling at 2 GHz, plus eight FPGAs with a total of 352,000 programmable slices and 800,000 logic cells. Additional resources of up to 8 Gbytes
of DDR memory and 128 Mbytes of flash provide a complete real-time data acquisition and DSP environment for extremely wide band signals. Pricing for the
Model 6890 starts at $4,995. The single-channel version of the Model 6826 starts
at $19,345.
Dual-LAN, Dual-LVDS Mini-ITX
Mainboard
ES
Clock, Sync and Gate Distribution Board Synchronizes
2 GHz A/D Modules
BOOTH
306
panels, four COM ports, a PCI slot and up to
six USB 2.0 ports. Project-based customers
also have the option of a VIA CX700M2 version with added TV-out functionality.
Incorporating the ultra-low-power consumption VIA C7 processors at 1.5 GHz or
fanless at 1 GHz, the VIA EPIA LT-Series
platform provides high performance per watt
and a feature set dedicated to connectivity.
Supporting up to 1 Gbyte of 533 MHz DDR2
memory, the VIA CX700 drives a range of
connection options including dual LVDS support and two 10/100 fast Ethernet modules,
with a Gigabit option, two SATA connectors
and up to six USB 2.0 ports.
Digital multimedia is provided with VIA
UniChrome Pro II IGP, featuring MPEG2 video decoding acceleration and 2D/3D
graphics, plus a built-in HDTV encoder up to
1080i for MPEG-2 HD DVD playback, while
the VIA Vinyl Multichannel HD audio chip
also provides an exceptional listening experience. Additionally, the boards will support the
forthcoming MFX module for greater system
security, energy efficiency and data protection, featuring key storage, wake-up and event
logging functions.
The VIA EPIA LT Mini-ITX mainboard is compatible with Microsoft Windows 2000/XP, XPe, CE and Linux, as well
as being fully compatible with all Mini-ITX,
FlexATX and MicroATX chassis and associated accessories.
VIA Technologies, Fremont, CA.
(510) 683-3300. [www.via.com.tw].
IEI’s Leading-edge Solutions Powered by AMD 690G
Products&TECHNOLOGY
USB-Based Sensors Provide Simpler Power Measurements without a Power Meter
A series of USB-based power sensors is more affordable and lighter weight than typical power meters and similar power-sensing solutions. The sensors can be used with a variety of Agilent signal sources, spectrum analyzers and network analyzers, extending each instrument’s capabilities to perform accurate average-power measurements. In addition to fast and easy setup with plug-and-play USB connectivity,
the sensors also ease monitoring and troubleshooting with the N1918A Power Analysis Manager software.
Because the Agilent U2000 Series sensors are USB-powered and provide built-in triggering, they don’t require external power adapters
and triggering modules for synchronization with external instruments or events.
The Agilent U2000 Series currently includes four models that deliver up to 250 readings/s, 9 kHz to 24 GHz frequency range and -60
dBm to +20 dBm power range. Each sensor includes a high-speed USB 2.0 interface for simple, quick setup. With internal zeroing capability,
calibration can be done without disconnecting the sensor from the device under test, hence reducing test time and sensor wear and tear.
The sensor displays power measurement results on a PC or selected Agilent instrument with the N1918A Power Analysis Manager software. On
top of the normal waveform monitoring option, the software also eases
monitoring and troubleshooting with functions such as limit and alert
settings, record and playback, multiple-list view, overlay and
channel mathematics. Pricing starts at $2,300.
Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA.
(408) 345-8886. [www.agilent.com].
Intelligent Plug-in Servo Drive for Limited Space
Integration
An intelligent servo drive controls DC, brushless, linear and step
motors up to 75W (24V, 3A) and embeds motion control, drive and PLC
functionalities in one open-frame unit (size 59 x 42 x 20 mm). The PIM2043intelligent plug-in module PIM2403 from Technosoft is based on the
MotionChip drive technology. Typical feedback devices include incremental encoder, digital and linear Halls. Distributed control is done over
CAN, CANopen, RS-232 networks, or Ethernet
through an external adapter.
The drive is
programmable in
EasyMotion Studio
with Technosoft
Motion Language
(TML) and graphical tools. It is best
valued in systems with
distributed intelligence,
where the motion application
tasks are split between master
and drives. Its embedded motion
controller offers the same high-level
motion language for all motors, making their technology differences transparent to the user. Complex movement sequences can be programmed
directly on the drive, while system control functions are handled from
the supervising PC/PLC. Motion modes such as contouring, profiling,
gearing, electronic camming and PVT are easily executed in stand-alone
or multi-axis operations. Libraries for C, C++, C#, Delphi, Visual Basic,
Labview and motion libraries for various PLCs are available for quick
integration into applications.
Technosoft, Bevaix, Switzerland. +41 32 732 55 00.
[www.technosoftmotion.com].
Untitled-3 1
August 2007
49
7/10/07 12:37:56 PM
Products&TECHNOLOGY
PICMG 1.3 Backplanes Optimized for 2U Chassis Applications
Two new PICMG 1.3 butterfly form-factor backplanes support SHB Express system
host boards and a variety of PCI Express (PCIe) option cards. The BPG6741 and BPX6736
from Trenton Technology are optimized for use in 2U chassis systems that operate in graphics-class or server-class embedded computing applications.
Side A of the BPG6741 graphics-class backplane supports
one PICMG 1.3 SHB and one x16 PCI Express option card slot.
This slot is driven by a x16 PCIe link from a graphics-class system host board and is designed to support x16 PCI Express option cards such as those used in video, graphics and vision inspection systems. Side A also includes the USB Audio interface.
Side B includes two x8 PCIe slots driven with x1 links from an
SHB like a Trenton MCG-series system host board.
Side A of the BPX6736 server-class backplane supports
one PICMG 1.3 SHB, one x16 and one x8 PCI Express option
card slot. These two option card slots are each driven with a x8
Get
with technology
and board. The side A
PCIe
linkConnected
from a server-class
system host
providing
now
slotscompanies
of the BPX6736
aresolutions
designed
to support two PCI Express
Get Connected
a new resource
for further exploration
option
cards whereis multiple
high-bandwidth,
server-class opinto cards
products,
Whether
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goal
tion
aretechnologies
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application.
Side
also includes
is to research the latest datasheet from a company, speak directly
the USB Audio interface. Side B includes two x8 PCIe slots
with an Application Engineer, or jump to a company's technical page, the
driven
with x1is links
from
an SHB
like
a Trenton
goal of Get
Connected
to put you
in touch
with the
right
resource. MCX-series
system
host
board.
Whichever level of service you require for whatever type of technology,
Connected
help you connect
with the companies
and products
A new featureGet
on the
Trenton will
BPG6741
and BPX6736
is the USB
Audio Controller.
you are searching
for.
USB audio takes advantage
of the optional
USB edge connector routings between a PICMG
1.3 SHB and the backplane.
This allows a designer to implement system audio with a minimum of cables and without the added expense of an audio option card. USB audio also has
the net effect of freeing up an option card slot. The backplanes are available now and typical
pricing starts at $316.
Data Recorder Slurps up 480
Mbytes/s
A new high-speed recorder provides over
480 Mbytes/s (3.8 Gbits/s) recording and playback performance in a space-, weight- and
power-efficient package designed for remote
or portable applications. The Big River LTX2
from Conduant can operate as a stand-alone
system with network control or can be directly
connected to a host computer via its StarFabric
PCI bridge interface. The 1U (1.75”) high chas-
Ad Index
sis, which is less than 16” in width and depth,
accepts sixteen 2 1/2” disk drives for up to 3.2
Terabytes of storage capacity. The user may
choose lower-cost, high-performance rotating disk storage or solid-state drives for more
environmental tolerance such as shock, vibration, temperature, humidity and atmospheric
pressure, depending on the user application.
The Big River LTX2 is based on Conduant’s StreamStor Amazon architecture,
which supports a wide variety of external,
Trenton Technology, Atlanta, GA. (770) 287-3100. [www.TrentonTechnology.com].
interchangeable interface mezzanine cards
Get Connected with technology and companies providing solutions now including FPDP, FPDP2, LVDS, Serial FPDP
Get Connected is a new resource for further exploration into products, technologies andand
companies.
Whether
yourCommand
goal is to research
latest
Camera
Link.
and the
control
datasheet from a company, speak directly with an Application Engineer, or jump to a company's technical page, the goal of Get Connected is to put you
functions can be performed through the Star4-Ohm Quad SPST
CMOS Analog Switches
Fabric interface or through an Ethernet conTwo new series ofGet
quad
SPST CMOS
analog
switches
highand
switching
speeds
with for.
Connected
will help
you connect
withcombine
the companies
products you
are searching
nection. Connectivity to a host computer using
high signal bandwidth
for use in a wide range of switching applications, inwww.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected
the StarFabric interface provides full PCI percluding audio, video, data and power. The Vishay Siliconix DG451 and
formance for data retrieval at 200 Mbytes/s.
DG454 series of devices has four independently selectable 44-V
The Big River LTX2 Software applications
SPST switches, each with a typical on-resistance of 4 ohms
can also utilize the StreamStor application
and a typical flatness of 0.2 ohms, ideal parameters for lowprogram interface (API) from a network condistortion audio signal switching.
nected host computer for control of the device
The DG454 series does not require a logic voltage pin. The adfrom a remote location. Base pricing starts at
vantages of this feature include no requirement for a 5V power supply to
around $28,000 for a 1.6 Terabyte system.
operate, no need for a PCB trace connecting the logic voltage pin, and no need for power supConduant, Longmont, CO.
ply sequencing. The DG451 and DG454 are normally closed, while the DG452 and DG455 are
(303) 485-2721. [www.conduant.com].
normally open.
The new switches are optimized for analog switching, including audio, data, video and power
Connected
within
companies
andvideo systems, precision automatic test equipment,
switching, Get
and data
acquisition
audio and
Get Connected
products
featured in
this section.
data acquisition
systems,
relay
replacement, communications systems, automotive and avionics
systems, and
sample and hold systems. Pricing is $1.95 in quantity 1,000.
Products
End of Article
Vishay Intertechnology, Malvern, PA. (619) 336-0860. [www.vishay.com].
50
August 2007
ON
Two ultra-high-speed analog capture modules featuring
the latest Giga-sample Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs)
from National Semiconductor have been introduced by Nallatech. The new products offer customers multiple ultrawide-band analog I/O capture channels directly coupled to a
Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGA—a combination suited for addressing
the processing requirements of demanding embedded applications such as SIGINT, RADAR and LIDAR (light detecting
and ranging).
The Nallatech BenADC 3G features two National 8-bit
3 Gsample/s ADCs, an external clock input and digital trigger.
Each ADC083000 ADC can achieve up to 7.0 effective number of bits (ENOB), 44.5 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and
54.5 dB spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) when sampling
An ultra-high-density analog input data
acquisition card combines high density with
high bandwidth via an x1 PCI Express bus.
The DAQe-2208 card from Adlink is capable
of sampling up to 96 single-ended AI channels
at 12 bits and 3 Msamples/s with different gain
settings and scan sequences. It offers differenOS
CB T
tial modes for 48 AI channels to provide opBOOTH
timal noise elimination, making it compatible
1716
with ultra-high-density analog signals with various input
ranges and sampling speeds. The DAQe-2208 features
also include analog and digital triggering and 24 programmable digital I/O lines.
The DAQe-2208 offers a system synchronization interface (SSI)
bus to allow up to four cards to be synchronized for simplified expansion
of testing capabilities, auto-calibration that adjusts the gain and offset
to within specified parameters to ensure testing accuracy regardless of
the environment uncertainty, and scatter-gather bus mastering to allow
the acquisition of large amounts of data at a high speed by transferring
data directly to and from the memory through the DMA controller. The
DAQe-2208 supports Windows, including Vista, and Linux, and also
comes with software support for LabVIEW, MATLAB, .NET, Visual
C++ and Visual Basic. Single unit pricing starts at $1,095.
ES
Multichannel Analog Capture Modules
Feature 8-bit 3 Gsample/s ADCs
96-Channel PCI Express Analog Input DAQ Card
with SSI Bus
Adlink Technology, Irvine, CA. (949) 727-2099.
[www.adlinktech.com].
a 748 MHz input signal at 3 Gsample/s. Trigger and clock
signal inputs allow simultaneous sampling of both channels,
enabling synchronous data acquisition on a single card. Two
banks of DDR-II SRAM memory are directly coupled to the
user FPGA allowing algorithm and ADC data to be locally
buffered. National’s LMX2531LQ1500E delta-sigma phaselocked loop and voltage-controlled oscillator (PLL+VCO) integrated circuit is also featured on the BENADC-3G module.
It provides a very stable, low-noise clock source in order to
achieve the highest SNR (or ENOB) possible from the Gsample rate ADCs.
The BenADC 1.5G features the same FPGA and memory back-end as the BenADC 3G, however it utilizes two
ADC08D1500 National ADCs providing users with four 8bit 1.5 Gsample/s analog capture channels as well as external
clock and trigger inputs. This product is the ideal solution for
applications such as beam forming that requires a high number of input channels per FPGA. This product will be available Q3 2007. Both products are available with a choice of
Virtex-4 SX55, LX100 or LX160 user FPGAs.
Both products are delivered with a suite of optimized
IP cores and reference designs. Xilinx System Generator library components are also provided allowing non-VHDL users to target the hardware using Simulink. Software support
includes Windows, Linux and VXWorks.
Nallatech, Inc., Eldersburg, MD. (410) 552-3352.
[www.nallatech.com].
Safe CAN-Data Transmission via Fiber-Optic Line
A fiber-optic repeater for the transmission of CAN messages in an environment with high electromagnetic influences as well as the dependable
galvanic isolation of subassemblies has been introduced by IXXAT. The
new CAN-CR210/FO offers a lineup version
of its approved FO-Repeater. Several CANCR210/FO can be connected via the
integrated backbone bus, which
allows the set-up of a star-coupler with an almost unlimited
number of channels.
The CAN-CR210/
FO allows the automatic recognition and
separation of a defective segment from the
rest of the network, so
that the remaining network
can continue working. After elimination of the defect, the segment is automatically
switched into the network again. The CAN-CR210/FO has one highspeed CAN interface (ISO/IS 11898-2), an integrated backbone-bus and
a fiber-optic interface (50/125 μm duplex). For the fiber-optic interface,
a version with FSMA or ST-Socket is available. The repeater is delivered in a small plastic case for DIN rail mounting. The power supply can
be provided in a wide range from 9 to 35 VDC.
IXXAT, Bedford, NH. (603) 471-0800. [www.ixxat.com].
August 2007
51
Products&TECHNOLOGY
Simulation and Testing Services
for Cabinet Enclosures
A number of design services for cabinet enclosures offered by Optima EPS, an Elma company,
include thermal simulation, structural analysis, environmental testing, agency approvals, and more.
Using computational fluid dynamics and finite
testing, Optima can identify potential hot spots in
the cabinet. From there, Optima can use a combination of techniques to resolve the issue. These
include fan placement and type, heat exchangers,
blocking or redirecting airflow, and more. Customers can be assured of a cooling solution that meets
their specifications.
Optima can also provide structural analysis
and environmental testing. Also, the humidity, salt
fog, corrosion and temperature stresses can be measured. The simulation and testing can be performed on Optima’s various cabinet enclosure styles. The company offers cabinets for Mil/Aero,
EMC, Harsh Environments, Seismic, Telecom/DataCom, Industrial and Medical applications.
Optima specializes in customization and modifications to its base platforms—in any volume.
FPGA DSP Devices Target
Sweet Spot for Wireless,
Video, Consumer Apps
Shipping in production, the Spartan-3A
DSP platform from Xilinx offers 20 GMACs
for under $30 for a wide range of low-cost, dataintensive applications including wireless, video
surveillance, personal medical and consumer
applications. The Spartan-3A DSP platform is
part of the Xilinx XtremeDSP solutions that
provide developers with a complete portfolio of
Optima EPS, Tucker, GA. (770) 496-4000. [www.optimaeps.com].
4-Channel Video Frame Grabber in PC/104-Plus Format
ES
ON
For high demands in security and surveillance applications, image recording (digitizing) and image evaluation, Advanced Digital-Logic has developed the video frame
grabber, Microspace MSMG104+. The PC/104-Plus extension card is based on a BT878
frame grabber
with 4-channel video multiplexer. Three video cameras (CVBS)
and one S-Video camera can be connected to the product.
The compact video frame grabber supports common
image formats like PAL and NTSC. Software
supports toggling between both formats. The
bandwidth for PAL resolution is 30 frames/
sec. The 32-bit/33 MHz PCI bus permits simultaneous operation of two video streams
in PAL resolution. More cameras (3-4) are
possible with a reduced number of frames or lower
OS
CB T
resolution or by using multiple MSMG104+ cards respectively. Drivers for Windows and Linux are available.
BOOTH
409
The card is connected to the 32-bit PCI bus and requires only
one PCI resource.
The MSMG104+ requires a 5V power supply and operates within the standard temperature range of -25° to +70°C. On request, it is also available for an extended
operating temperature range from -40° to +85°C.
Digital-Logic, Luterbach, Switzerland. +41 (0)32 681 58 00.
[www.digitallogic.ch].
programmable logic devices, IP, development
tools and a third-party DSP ecosystem.
The Spartan-3A DSP platform gives
developers the opportunity to leverage the
flexibility and inherent parallel processing
capabilities of FPGAs in low-cost and mobile applications. The platform is based on
Xilinx’s Spartan-3 generation FPGAs, with
the added power management and connectivity features of the Spartan-3A platform. At
the heart of the Spartan-3A DSP architecture
is the XtremeDSP DSP48A slice that enables
designers to implement many independent
arithmetic functions.
Xilinx XtremeDSP solutions come complete with silicon platforms, design tools, development boards and kits, reference designs
and a host of signal processing IP for wireless and multimedia video applications. The
XtremeDSP silicon portfolio delivers three
device platforms: the Virtex-4 SX platform
with over 250 GMACS at 500 MHz, Virtex5 SXT platform for ultra-high-bandwidth with
over 350 GMACS at 550MHz and integrated
low-power serial connectivity, and the Spartan-3A DSP platform with over 30 GMACS at
250 MHz. The 3SD1800A device is priced at
$29.85 and the 3SD3400A device is priced at
$44.95. Pricing is for 25,000 units in volume
production, end 2008.
Xilinx, San Jose, CA. (408) 559-7778.
[www.xilinx.com].
52
August 2007
AMC SHOWCASE
Featuring the latest in AMC technology
AM4520 AdvancedMC SAS
Module - Full-Size/Mid-Size
AM4301 AdvancedMC
Quad GbE Module - MidSize
Highly reliable storage AMC to achieve
higher IOPs performance in spaceconstrained network infrastructures.
Full-Size/Mid-Size (AMC.0 Rev 2.0)
AMC.3 compliant
Up to 146 GB capacity
10,000 rpm, 4.1ms average seek time
8-Mbyte cache buffer for improved
performance
S.M.A.R.T. technology capable
Management through IPMI
1.5 implementation
Power On Hour (POH) IPMI counter
support to diagnose disk usage in
terms of number of hours
Kontron
Phone: (888) 526-ATCA
Fax: (858) 677-0898
Kontron
Fax: (858) 677-0898
Ideal multi-port AdvancedMC module
for maximum performance
4 x Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) via RJ45
connectors, sharing a PCIe x4 link as
per AMC.1 Rev 1.0
Full fast path buffer for QoS
Virtual LANs 802.3q VLAN tagging
Manages hot-swap control, power and
temperature
Supports remote management via
IPMI v1.5, and features a Management
Controller that is run-time field
reprogrammable without any payload
impact
Kontron
Web: www.kontron.com/OMS
Fax: (858) 677-0898
AM4010 AdvancedMC
Processor Module
AM4100 AdvancedMC
Processor Module
High performance with Intel® Core™
Duo or Intel® Core™ 2 Duo
Full-Size / Mid-size (AMC.0 Rev 2.0)
Intel® Core™ Duo (up to 1.66 GHz) or
Intel® Core™ 2 Duo (up to 1.5 GHz)
Up to 2 GByte SDRAM memory
(soldered) with ECC running at 400 MHz
Up to 4 GByte NAND Flash memory
via onboard USB 2.0 Flash Controller
Flexible Gigabit and PCI-Express
fabric interface
Two dual Gigabit Ethernet controllers
each with a x4 lane PCI Express
interconnection to the Intel® 3100
chipset
Superb monitoring features
PICMG AMC.0/.1/.2/.3 compliance
IPMI v1.5 support
Freescale dual-core MPC8641D
PowerPC
Full-Size / Mid-Size (AMC.0 Rev 2.0)
Freescale dual-core MPC8641D
PowerPC, 1.0/1.33/1.5 GHz
0.5/1/2 GByte soldered SDRAM
memory with ECC running at up to
533 MHz
512 MByte (up to 2 GByte) onboard
NAND Flash controller
Flexible Gigabit and PCI-Express
fabric interface
Excellent monitoring features
PICMG AMC.0/.1/.2 compliance
(prepared for AMC.4)
IPMI v1.5 support
VxWorks and Linux support
Kontron
Fax: (858) 677-0898
GX-AMC
AMC131
Mid-size, single wide, fully-connected
Advanced Mezzanine Card
High-density Altera® Stratix® II GX
FPGA
BittWare’s ATLANTiS™ framework
BittWare’s FINe™ bridge
Over 1 GByte of memory
Front panel I/O
BittWare I/O Module: 76 LVDS pairs, 4
SerDes, Clocks, I2C, JTAG, DIO
Bittware, Inc.
Phone: (603) 226-0404
Fax: (603) 226-6667
Freescale Dual Core 1GHz
MPC8641D PowerPC® Processor
High-Performance, Networkoptimized Computing Solution for
ATCA and uTCA Systems
Up to 2GB ECC DDR2 SDRAM
Four Gb Ethernet Interfaces
AdvancedMC .0, .1, and .2 Compatible
Supports CGL Linux and Windows
Performance Technologies
Web: www.bittware.com
Phone: (585) 256-0200
Fax: (585) 256-0791
Web: www.pt.com
portabledesign
conference & exhibition
santa clara october 3rd - 4th 2007
c o n v e n t i o n
c e n t e r
Join industry leaders in portable and mobile design
for this 2 day executive summit.
Conference sessions, Analyst
Presentations and Panel Discussions on:
Low-power design--tools and
techniques
Wireless communications--3G
LTE, WiMAX, Zigbee, NFC,
802.11n, Bluetooth
Consumer electronics--design
challenges and innovative
solutions
Industrial control, portable
medical, mobile military
and more
register today at:
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sponsored by
Products&TECHNOLOGY
Modular Flat Panel Computing Fits Industrial Environments
A flat panel touch-screen computer combines an AMD Geode processor with a wide selection of touch-screen LCDs and I/O expansion modules. The modular design of the SeaPAC-LX from Sealevel Systems gives designers a wide range of configuration options and
makes field maintenance and upgrades easy. SeaPAC-LX systems are suited for a variety
of operator interface and machine control applications requiring small size and versatile
I/O connectivity.
Powered by a fanless 500 MHz AMD Geode LX800 processor, SeaPAC-LXs are
equipped with a robust standard I/O feature set. Dual 10/100Base-T Ethernet, four serial
ports, four high-speed USB 2.0 ports and eight-bit general-purpose digital I/O are available
on each system. For flexible local and remote I/O interface, SeaPAC-LXs expand using
Sealevel’s SeaI/O data acquisition modules. Designers can choose from Reed and Form
C relays, optically isolated inputs, TTL, A/D, D/A and serial options. The SeaPAC-LX’s
processor communicates with SeaI/O devices using Modbus RTU allowing one or more
SeaI/O modules to be physically attached to the SeaPAC-LX or located remotely up to
4000 feet away.
companies
SeaPAC-LX systems are available with displays
ranging providing
from 6.4 solutions
- 17” andnow
include
Get
Connected
is a new resource
for touch
further exploration
a rugged panel mount bezel that provides Nema 4/IP65 protection from sprayed liquids on the front
surface.
The optional
resistive
into products,
technologies
companies.
Whether your goal
screen enables intuitive operator interface and offers years of durable service. SeaPAC-LXs are powered
by 12VDC,
and and
power
is provided
to research
the latest datasheet
from abracket
company,alspeak directly
to SeaI/O expansion modules using convenient pass-through connectors. The system is rated foris0°-50°C
operation,
and a VESA
lows attaching to a mounting arm. SeaPAC-LX systems are priced beginning at $1,495, and product is available immediately from stock.
Ad Index
Sealevel Systems, Liberty, SC. (864) 843-4343. [www.sealevel.com].
Get Connected will help you connect with the companies and products
AdvancedTCA Packet Processing Appliance for
Multi-Service IP Networks
Get Connected with technology and companies providing
A low-profile bladed ATCA packet processing system delivers up to 20
Get Connected is a new resource for further exploration into product
Gbits/s of deep packet inspection capability in a very compact system. The
datasheet from a company, speak directly with an Application Engineer, o
ATCA Packet Processing Appliance from Continuous Computing supports
in touch with the right resource. Whichever level of service you require for
Get Connected will help you connect with the companies and products y
all the quality of service (QoS) and traffic engineering functions required by
telecom equipment manufacturers (TEMs) in order to rapidly deploy multi-serwww.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected
vice Internet Protocol (IP) networks and meet time-to-market requirements. To
complement this new system, Continuous Computing also offers a range of ATCA
FlexChassis options, including 12U, 5U and now 2U/3U chassis, to address the scalability and pricing needs of the next-generation telecom market.
Continuous Computing’s integrated ATCA Packet Processing Appliance comes with a suite of
Trillium software including control plane, networking and routing protocols—such as SIP, Diameter, IPv4,
IPv6, IPSEC, IGMP, BGP and OSPF—as well as customized Trillium Professional Services. Each low-profile system
contains a FlexPacket ATCA-PP50 deep packet inspection blade and a FlexCompute ATCA-XE30 general processing blade,
both housed in either a carrier-grade 2U DC-powered or a 3U AC-powered ATCA chassis.
A key element of Continuous Computing’s new security appliance, the FlexPacket ATCA-PP50 packet processing blade incorporates two
XLR732 multicore MIPS devices from Raza Microelectronics, Inc. (RMI) that deliver packet processing and security at line rates up to 20 Gbits/s.
Get
Connected
withand
companies
FlexPacket supports a dual redundant 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) backplane fabric with
a range
of 10GbE
1GbE and
ports to the front and rear deproducts
featured
in
this
section.
pending on a customer’s specific cabling requirements. Each XLR732 multicore MIPS64 processor supports up to 8 Gbytes of memory (16 Gbytes
per blade) and can connect to mezzanine sites for supporting TCAM and dedicated content processors via the on-chip HyperTransport interface.
E
Products
Continuous Computing, San Diego, CA. (858) 882-8800. [www.ccpu.com].
August 2007
55
Products&TECHNOLOGY
Low-Cost Motion Control Cards Deliver High-Speed Motion Trace
Two motion control cards from Performance Motion Devices provide real-time, high-speed
servo trace capture with 40 Kbytes onboard dual-port memory. This trace feature allows up to
four motion variables to be stored at the same time. Each variable can be either 16 or 32 bits in
size. Twenty-eight separate parameters can be selected for trace such as position, velocity, acceleration, servo lag, and much more. The
capture “trigger” for the trace feature is
programmable, and can be based on a variety of conditions such as motion start or
external signal change. The captured data
is automatically loaded into an external
RAM chip, and may be downloaded by
the host during capture, or after capture
is complete.
Designed with PMD’s Magellan Motion
Control IC, the Prodigy Motion Cards provide board-level, multi-axis
motion control for DC brush, brushless DC, step and microstepping
motors. They are available in PCI and PC/104 configurations, and provide 1,
2, 3 or 4 axes of control. In addition to trace capture, Prodigy cards provide motion control
features including trajectory generation, servo loop closure, quadrature signal input, motor output signal generation, on-the-fly changes, commutation, and much more.
Additional features include S-curve, trapezoidal, velocity contouring, electronic gearing
and user-generated profile modes. The cards accept input parameters such as position, velocity, acceleration and jerk from the host, and generate a corresponding trajectory. Instantaneous
on-the-fly changes can be sent by the user, and external signal inputs can be used to program
automatic profile changes. Prices start at $380 in OEM quantities.
Core Duo EPIC SBC Boasts
Dual Display Capability
A stackable EPIC single board computer
with onboard Intel Core Duo processor is built
entirely with industrial-grade components and
special vibration-proof connectors to provide
a rock-solid, reliable embedded platform suitable for high vibration and wide temperature
range applications. The PCM-4390 from Advantech can support dual independent LVDS
(36-bit/ 48-bit) displays. The module is compliant with PCI-104, PC/104+ and PC/104, allowing additional I/O expansion modules to be
easily stacked for greater functionality.
PCM-4390 is designed with industrialgrade components for higher reliability and a
wider operating temperature range. It is also
equipped with robust connectors: male and fe-
Performance Motion Device, Lincoln, MA. (781) 674-9860. [www.pmdcorp.com].
Time-to-Digital Converter for Precise
Timing-Measurement Applications
A time-to-digital converter (TDC) features six independent stopwatches for precise timing measurements from
a common start event to multiple stop events at a high resolution. The TC890 from Agilent Technologies is designed for
precision time measurement applications, including laser detection and ranging (LIDAR) for 3D mapping and navigation,
fluorescence lifetime spectrometry and ion counting in timeof-flight mass spectrometry (TOFMS). Many pulse-timing
measurements, such as period, frequency and time interval
analysis (TIA), also benefit from the new TDC’s precise measurement technology.
The TC890 records multiple events or hits on each of
its six input channels, with a timing resolution of 50 picoseconds and a mean dead time between sequential pulses on the
same input (double pulse resolution) of less than 15 nanoseconds. Running at full speed, the instrument offers a 25 million events-per-second data-throughput rate. It enables event
counting or histogram creation for easy data and spectra comparison. Pricing starts at $13,700.
Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA.
(408) 424-4536. [www.agilent.com].
56
August 2007
male connectors with locking clasp to enhance
anti-vibration capability. To further enhance
its robustness, PCM-4390 uses a USB-DOM
Solid State Disk (SSD) solution. USB-DOM
supports quicker boot-up and read/write performance, an improvement over CompactFlash
(CF) and regular Hard Disk Drives (HDD).
PCM-4390 comes with Advantech Secure and Unified Smart Interface (SUSI)
support. SUSI is a suite of APIs that simplifies hardware and software application implementation. It additionally supports socket SODIMM DDR2 400/533/667 MHz SDRAM up
to 1 Gbyte. It also has two SATA II ports, dual
BroadCom Giga LAN, eight GPIO, four COM
(3 x RS232, 1 x RS232/422/485) and eight
USB 2.0 ports. PCM-4390 offers a choice of a
fanless solution and/or Windows XPe.
Advantech, Irvine, CA. (800) 866-6008.
[www.advantech.com].
Embedded Device Networking Module/
Web Server with Advanced Security
OS
CB T
ON
ES
A turnkey, application-ready programmable device server
module delivers secure Ethernet connectivity and advanced
Web server capabilities for under $40 in volume quantities.
The MatchPort AR from Lantronix enables OEMs to rapidly
network-enable their products with the ability to send serial
data over standard Ethernet with virtually no programming
required. Running on a 32-bit processor with the Evolution OS
operating system, MatchPort AR provides performance that allows it to address data-intensive machine-to-machine (M2M)
applications such as medical, security, retail/POS, industrial/
building automation, metering, gaming and signage applications to name a few.
BOOTH
812
3U Carrier-Class NEBS-3 Server for HighAvailability Apps
Boasting space-saving size—3U high by 20 inches deep—a 3U
Carrier-Class Rackmount Server from One Stop Systems fits easily
and comfortably in a telecom rack. The server can withstand extreme
heat, humidity, altitude and
zone 4 earthquake shocks.
With an intelligent alarm
management system, the
3U NEBS-3 certified server
provides visual, audible (optional) and simple network
management protocol (SNMP)
indications of faults when conditions warrant administrative attention. These features are consistent with the rigid requirements of the
telecom Central Office environment.
The 3U server employs easily replaceable fan filters providing
greater cooling capacity. The dual hot-swappable power supplies provide redundant power, further extending the system’s service life. The
3U server offers ample expansion capabilities with two PCI Express
(PCIe) x8 slots, two PCIe x4 slots, one PCI-X 100/133 MHz slot and one
PCI-X 100 MHz slot. The 3U Carrier-Class Server lists for $11,950.
One Stop Systems, Escondido, CA. (760) 745-9883.
[www.onestopsystems.com].
The MatchPort AR provides a platform for secure networking with SSH and SSL protocols, advanced Web services
such as AJAX, a full-featured protocol stack and SNMP device management capabilities. Now OEMs have the ability to
rapidly develop network-ready, Web-enabled devices by simply
connecting the host microcontroller’s serial port to one of the
MatchPort AR’s two available serial ports.
MatchPort’s Evolution OS offers a variety of data encryption and authentication options including industry-standard secure SSH v2 and SSL v3 protocol support with a choice of AES,
3DES encryption coupled with SHA-1 or MD5 authentication. In
addition, the MatchPort AR optionally provides end-to-end FIPS
(Federal Information Processing Standard -197 Compliant) AES
encryption. The Evolution OS also supports public/private key
infrastructures and provides the flexibility to use any key size to
deliver ease of integration with host applications. Evolution OS
was also designed with defenses to hostile Internet attacks such
as denial of service (DoS) and port mapping.
MatchPort’s integrated advanced Web server can transform
a stand-alone device into a fully functional network node that can
be remotely managed, monitored and configured via a standard
Web browser—from anywhere in the world. Users can remotely
monitor and collect information from the device in real time using the CGI (Common Gateway Interface)-compliant server, and
send the information to dynamic Web pages. Its integrated AJAX
support delivers an intuitive and dynamic user experience for data
acquisition and display. Additionally, it supports open standards
such as “Cisco-like” CLI, XML and serial and Telnet management options, enabling users to easily configure the MatchPort
AR. A software development kit (API) will also be available to enable OEMs to customize their delivered applications. Pricing will
be below $40 to qualified high-volume customers.
PC/104+ Fanless CPU Module Hits Cost/
Performance Sweet Spot
A PC/104+ fanless single board computer designed to meet the
requirements of various types of industrial computing is a suitable solution for communication,
gaming and medical applications that require
flat panel support using
digital displays with
TTL interfaces. For superior performance and
low power consumption,
PCM-4153 from Advantech uses an AMD
Geode LX800 processor clocked at 500 MHz
in conjunction with onboard DDR333 system
memory. With a convenient connector layout and easy assembly, PCM-4153 is a good choice
for customers wanting easy system expansion.
It is equipped with multiple I/O ports for flexibility, including two
10/100 Mbit/s Ethernet, four USB 2.0, one RS-232/422/485 and three
RS-232 ports. For applications situated in harsh environments, PCM4153 is designed to be of industrial grade, with an operating temperature ranging from as low as -40° up to 85°C.
Advantech, Irvine, CA. (800) 866-6008. [www.advantech.com].
Lantronix, Irvine, CA. (949) 453-3990.
[www.lantronix.com].
August 2007
57
Products&TECHNOLOGY
Ad Index
ON
A rugged COTS DSP processing card integrates a Freescale
MPC8641D processor, two Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs and a VXSbased high-speed serial interconnect fabric. The VPF2 from
VMetro tackles both high-bandwidth preprocessing and demanding back-end processing in one 6U VME64/VITA 41 product for
advanced DSP applications such as real-time video processing,
surveillance, radar and others that demand the extremely high levels of flexibility and performance.
The processing heart of the Phoenix VPF2 is a Freescale
MPC8641D dual-core processor based on Power Architecture technology. The cores run up to 1.25 GHz with 2 Gbytes
of memory to support operating systems such as VxWorks and
Linux. Integrated within the MPC8641D processor is a complete
I/O subsystem, including two Gigabit Ethernet ports, serial I/O,
dual DDR/DDR2 memory controllers, VME interface and independent x8 PCI Express links to the Xilinx FPGAs and the
XMC/PMC site. The VPF2 has Ethernet options that support both RJ45 and optical interfaces or backplane I/O.
Closely coupled to the MPC8641D are two Xilinx Virtex5 SX95T FPGAs, optimized for DSP performance, or LX110T
FPGAs, optimized for high-performance logic. With their on-chip
serial transceivers, either of the Virtex-5 FPGA options provide
high-bandwidth off-board serial communications channels to processing and I/O subsystems. Since the
FPGAs connect to
fast I/O streams,
they can preprocess incoming data
in real time without
bottlenecks.
The FPGAs are
fully user-programmable and can be
configured from flash
memory.
VMetro
speeds up the development time by providing TransComm, a data streaming communications toolkit. This toolkit simplifies connecting VPF2
FPGA-centric systems together allowing the user to focus on key
IP core development. Both FPGA devices are supported with 4x
4M x 18-bit banks of QDR SRAM and 2x 64M x 16-bit SDRAM.
These memories allow large data sets, such as frame buffers or
large FFT information, to be stored locally for maximum FPGA
performance. The VPF2 will be available in a number of environmental build options ranging from air-cooled commercial to
rugged conduction-cooled.
Measuring just 12 cm x 12 cm, the VIA EPIA NR is a Nano-ITX
mainboard that natively supports LVDS in two single or one dual-channel monitor configuration without the need for a daughterboard. This
makes it suitable for a wide range of ultra-compact embedded devices
requiring two displays, such as healthcare, industrial control, retail and
signage systems. It is powered by a fanless 1.0 GHz VIA C7 processor
and VIA CX700 system media processor with a maximum CPU TDP of
just 9 watts and average operating power of well below 1 watt. Coupled
with up to 1 Gbyte of power-efficient DDR2 533 system memory, the
VIA EPIA NR mainboard operates at an average of below 15.5 watts
for regular applications.
The VIA EPIA NR also provides considerable storage options, with Serial ATA
and IDE hard drive connectors for
mainstream systems and Compact Flash for local OS
in now
industrial
companies providingstorage
solutions
automation. The
Get Connected is a new resource for further exploration
I/O setWhether
in- your goal
into products, technologies and companies.
cludes
broadis to research the latest datasheet from a company, speak directly
band Ethernet
with an Application Engineer, or jump to a company's
technical page, the
goal of Get Connected is to put you in
right resource.
astouch
wellwith
as the
a miniWhichever
level
of
service
you
require
for
whatever
type
of
technology,
PCI
port,
USB2.0,
COM,
O
S
CB T
Get Connected will LPC
help youand
connect
with the
Super
I/Ocompanies
headers;and products
BOOTH
while WLAN connectivity can be
306
supported through an add-in card for greater
flexibility in system design.
Additionally, the VIA EPIA NR leverages the display, storage and
I/O flexibility of the VIA CX700 system media processor, the all-inone, highly integrated embedded chipset featuring the VIA UniChrome
Pro II IGP graphics core, to provide embedded developers with an exGet Connected with technology and companies prov
tensive range of options enabling highly customized systems. There is
Get Connected is a new resource for further exploration into pro
also an optional upgrade to Gigabit Ethernet support. Expansion is easy
datasheet from a company, speak directly with an Application Engin
through an array of compatible
VIAtheaccessory
cards,
including
fur- you requir
in touch with
right resource.
Whichever
level ofa service
ther 4 COM ports (through
the LPC interface),
andconnect
both USB
and
mini- and produ
Get Connected
will help you
with the
companies
PCI-based wireless
modules.
ES
VXS DSP Card Blends Dual Core PowerPC,
Dual Virtex-5 FPGAs
Nano-ITX Mainboard for Healthcare, Retail and
Industrial Apps
VIA Technologies, Fremont, CA. (510) 683-3300.
[www.via.com.tw].
Products
VMetro, Houston, TX. (281) 584-0728. [www.vmetro.com].
58
August 2007
REAL-TIME & EMBEDDED
COMPUTING CONFERENCE
NEW TRAINING WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS
Register Today at www.rtecc.com
Enter a World of Embedded Computing Solutions
Attend open-door technical seminars and workshops especially designed for those developing computer systems
and time-critical applications. Get ahead with sessions on Multi-Core, Embedded Linux, VME, PCI Express, ATCA,
FPGA, Java, RTOS, SwitchFabric Interconnects, Windows, Wireless Connectivity, and much more.
Meet the Experts
Exhibits arranged in a unique setting to talk face-to-face with technical experts. Table-top exhibits make it easy
to compare technologies, ask probing questions and discover insights that will make a big difference in your
embedded computing world. Join us for this complimentary event!
Be sure to enter the drawing on-site for an iPod Video
Join Us In...
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Pump Up Your ARM
®
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October 2-4
2007
Santa Clara
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Combined tutorials with Portable Design Conference
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licensees and Connected Community members offer
a full complement of workshops and presentations
Forums and analyst presentations on industry trends
Plus: through the combination of track sessions,
presentations and company design centers you will be
fully immersed in leading strategies and methodologies
for building complex designs with the
ARM architecture.
And Finally-- Conference Delegates
who pre-register before September 10
receive the conference proceedings
on a 4 GB iPod Nano to take home!
Register early and save!
www.arm.com/developersconference
Co-Located
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Portable Design
Conference & Exhibition
Products&TECHNOLOGY
Modules Allow Fast Integration of DeviceNet Fieldbus into OEM/Embedded Systems
A new BradCommunications DC100DN OEM module for the DeviceNet Fieldbus has been added to the DC100 product family of OEM
modules from Woodhead Industries. The modules are characterized by small size (90 x 40 mm) and provide a connection to a choice of field
buses (CC-Link, PROFIBUS-DP, DeviceNet). The DC100 modules are designed for machine builders, system designers, and operator interface manufacturers who want to implement a field bus connection in their products quickly and at a lower cost.
The modules of the DC100 family are interchangeable, interfacing with the
host system through a 60-point connector. Its pin-out is identical regardless
of the type of module used, requiring minimum effort by system designers
to integrate the entire range of DC100 modules. The data exchanges and
the various network services (configuration, diagnostic, etc.) are carried out directly through dual-port memory (DP-Ram), reachable via
a generic library of functions. The DC100 modules include 256 Kbytes
flash memory for storing configuration data and a dedicated processor for
managing communication protocols. This embedded architecture provides optimal
performance in data acquisition without overloading the host system.
Ad Index
Woodhead Industries, Northbrook. IL. (847) 272-7990. [www.woodhead.com].
companies providing solutions now
6U CompactPCI Board Monitors
and Communicates System
Parameters to Remote PC
A new 6U CompactPCI (CPCI)
System Monitoring and Control Board
monitors the health and status of chassis
systems, making it perfect for telecom,
datacom, ISP and wireless server applications that require monitoring of critical system parameters.
The 6U SYSMON II from One
Stop Systems installs in the system
enclosure and communicates to a
remote PC via a 100Base-T Ethernet connection. It monitors eight fan
tachs, eight temperature sensors,
up to eight voltages and eight inputs
and eight outputs. All configuration
parameters are stored in non-volatile
flash. The 6U SYSMON II provides a
complete system package for applications requiring continuous operating computing.
It lists for $1,280 and is available immediately as part
number OSS-CPCI-6U-SYSMON2.
One Stop Systems, Escondido, CA. (760) 745-9883.
[www.onestopsystems.com].
Get Connected is a new resource for further exploration
into products, technologies and companies. Whether your goal
with an Rugged
Application Engineer,
or jump toSwitches
a company's technical page, the
Ethernet
Target
Harsh
Environments
Whichever
level of service
you require
for whatever type of technology,
Get Connected
help you of
connect
with the companies
and products
A willseries
industrial
Ethernet
you are searching
for. from Moxa Technologies come
switches
in an IP67-rated housing for ruggedness,
and are designed to be resistant to the effects of dust, dirt, humidity, vibration
and shock. The EDS-305-M12 series
of 5-port industrial unmanaged Ethernet switches with M12 connectors is
Get Connected
with
companies providin
designed for
thetechnology
toughest and
industrial
applications.
The rugged
Get Connected
is a new resource
for furtherdesign
exploration into produc
datasheet from
a company,
speak directly withswitches
an Application Engineer,
makes
the EDS-305-M12
in touch with thesuitable
right resource.
Whichever
level of enviservice you require fo
for use
in outdoor
ronments, such as in the transwww.rtcmagazine.com/getconnected
portation, mining, and water and
wastewater treatment industries.
The EDS-305-M12 switches
use M12 connectors for the Ethernet interface. M12 connectors can ensure a tight connection and keep Ethernet connections from popping
loose in high-vibration applications, such as in moving vehicles. In addition, the EDS-305-M12 switches have received industrial and safety
approvals, such as UL508, Class 1, Div. 2, and will also receive DNV/
GL maritime certification for specialized applications. Two models are
available. One model has an operating temperature range of 0° to 60°C,
and the other model has an extended operating temperature range of
-40° to 75°C.
Moxa Technologies,
Brea,
CA.
(714) 528-6777.
products featured
in this
section.
[www.moxa.com].
E
Products
August 2007
61
Advertiser Index
Get Connected with technology and companies providing solutions now
Get Connected is a new resource for further exploration into products, technologies and companies. Whether your goal is to research the latest
datasheet from a company, speak directly with an Application Engineer, or jump to a company's technical page, the goal of Get Connected is to put you
Get Connected will help you connect with the companies and products you are searching for.
Company
Page
Website
ACCES I/O Products.............................................................................................. 18................................................................................................. www.accesio.com
Acromag................................................................................................................ 23................................................................................................www.acromag.com
ACT/Technico........................................................................................................ 20........................................................................................... www.acttechnico.com
Products
End of Article
ADLINK Technology America, Inc............................................................................ 63...................................................................................www.adlinktechnology.com.
Advanet Technologies............................................................................................ 40.......................................................................................... www.advanettech.com
Ampro Computers, Inc........................................................................................... 25................................................................................................... www.ampro.com
Get
Connected
with companies
and
ARM
Developers’
Conference.
................................................................................
60....................................................................
www.arm.com/developersconference
Get Connected
BittWare.
............................................................................................................... 53.................................................................................................www.bittware.com
Corvalent.............................................................................................................. 39.......................................................................................................corvalent.com
Critical I/O............................................................................................................ 11................................................................................................ www.criticalio.com
ELMA Electronic, Inc.............................................................................................. 15..................................................................................................... www.elma.com
Embedded
Systems with
Conference.
............................................................................
48..........................................................................
www.embedded.com/esc/boston
Get
Connected
companies
and products featured in this section.
Extreme Engineering Solutions, Inc........................................................................ 37.................................................................................................. www.xes-inc.com
GE Fanuc Embedded Systems................................................................................. 2.................................................................................. www.gefanucembedded.com
Harting, Inc. EPT.................................................................................................... 19............................................................................ www.harting.com, www.ept.com
Hybricon Corporation............................................................................................. 34................................................................................................ www.hybricon.com
IEI Technology.................................................................................................... 26, 47........................................................................................www.usa.ieiworld.com
Innovative Integration......................................................................................... 12, 14.................................................................................... www.innovative-dsp.com
Intel...................................................................................................................... 21...................................................................................................... www.intel.com
Kontron America.............................................................................................. 6, 53 & 64........................................................................................... www.kontron.com
McObject LLC........................................................................................................ 49............................................................................................... www.mcobject.com
MEN Micro, Inc...................................................................................................... 13.............................................................................................. www.menmicro.com
One Stop Systems................................................................................................. 41.................................................................................... www.onestopsystems.com
Performance Technologies................................................................................... 9, 53........................................................................................................www.pt.com
Phoenix International.............................................................................................. 4.................................................................................................www.phenxint.com
Portable Design Conference.................................................................................. 54..................................................................... www.portabledesignconference.com
Real-Time & Embedded Computing Conference...................................................... 59..................................................................................................... www.rtecc.com
Red Rock Technologies, Inc................................................................................... 39...........................................................................................www.redrocktech.com
Sealevel Systems.................................................................................................. 45................................................................................................ www.sealevel.com
VersaLogic Corporation.......................................................................................... 35..............................................................................................www.versalogic.com
WinSystems.......................................................................................................... 17........................................................................................... www.winsystems.com
RTC (Issn#1092-1524) magazine is published monthly at 905 Calle Amanecer, Ste. 250, San Clemente, CA 92673. Periodical postage paid at San Clemente and at additional mailing offices.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to RTC, 905 Calle Amanecer, Ste. 250, San Clemente, CA 92673.
62
August 2007
Dual-Core Solutions in a Variety of
Form Factors
CompactPCI®
cPCI-6910
• Single Dual-Core Intel® Xeon® LV 2.0 GHz,
2 MB L2 cache
• Front Side Bus of 667 MHz
• Up to 2 GB DDR2 400 MHz soldered SDRAM
with ECC
• 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports via PCI Express
COM express
ETXexpress-DW400
• Intel® Core™2 Duo
• Two x4 PCI Express lanes or one x8 lane with EDMA
• Two vertical SODIMM or one horizontal for DDR2 400
FlexATX
M-885
• Socket M Intel® Core™2 Duo Industrial Motherboard
• Dual-Channel DDR2 memory
• Dual GbE ports via x1 PCI Express
PICMG® 1.3 SBC
NuPRO-965
Come visit us at ESC Boston,
Booth 1716
Call us toll-free at (866) 4-ADLINK
or email [email protected]
• 1066 MHz FSB LGA775 Intel® Core™2 Duo processor
• Intel® Q965 + ICH8 chipset with Dual-Channel DDR2
• One PCI Express x16 and four PCI Express x1 Link
You
kontron.com/you
FT
I
G
E
E
FR cher!
Kontron and the Kontron logo are registered trademarks of Kontron AG. All other
trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ©2007 Kontron America, Inc.
Vou
1-888-294-4558 - [email protected] — EMEA: +49 0 800 7253756 - Asia: +886 2 2910 3532
RESOURCES
INNOVATION
FOCUS
Kontron understands your individual
requirements. We’ve created products
and services that are tailored to your
unique needs.
Kontron has the Resources, Innovation
and Focus to meet those needs.
Visit Kontron at ESC Boston, booth 501
to experience how we Focus on You.

LoGiEs - The RTC Group Inc.

Transcription

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