[Conference Preview]
Boards, Software, Serial Buses—A Busy ESC Covers It All
Moscone Center is going to be a bustling place with the Embedded System Conference, electronicaUSA, and the Communications Design Conference all in the house.
Conferences typically highlight the latest and greatest in products. The same is true for the 2004 Embedded System Conference (ESC) at Moscone Center in San Francisco, March 29 through April 1. Yet there's a twist. Many of the product releases will focus on their incorporation of the latest crop of standards, such as PCI Express, Serial ATA, and AdvancedTCA.
The improved financial environment hearkens an upbeat show. Companies that are looking to exploit this situation will have plenty of off-the-shelf products available for new applications. Of course, it's possible to have some fun at the show, too.
After taking a look at Tensilica's latest Xtensa processor, check out the company's Sozbot competition. This compact robot combat tournament is one way to see technology in action. Tensilica also will have its Xtensa HiFi audio engine on hand. The 24-bit audio engine for system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs has received Dolby Laboratories' approval.
THINGS TO LOOK FOR PCI Express is one topic that should get lots of play on the floor, although production quantities of anything but PCI Express chips may be tough in the near future. Check out Intel's booth for the latest innovations, in addition to a wide range of communication and processor solutions. Other vendors will show off PCI Express-based motherboards. Look for most motherboards to sport Serial ATA (SATA) interfaces along with USB 2.0 hubs. It's the new wave, along with small-form-factor boards.
PMC-Sierra will highlight high-speed serial links as well, with its PM8359 QuadPHY 6G serializer/deserializer (SERDES) transceiver technology. The QuadPHY 6G multiplexes and demultiplexes eight 3.125-Gbit/s serial links into four 6.25-Gbit/s serial links. It also features the QuadSMX 3G, a bidirectional 2:1 multiplexer/demultiplexer, targeted at SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) solutions.
Standard Microsystems will show USB, Ethernet, and Arcnet products. These include its LAN83-C185 single-chip 10/100 Ethernet physical layer (PHY).
Serial fabrics will be out in force, although Advanced Switching must wait until the next show. In the meantime, a number of vendors will feature StarFabric products. StarGen will demonstrate its SG2010 PCI-to-StarFabric chip and six-port SG1010 StarFabric switch chip. InfiniBand has its representatives as well. SBS Technologies has its 24-port switch and host adapters in addition to a wide range of other board, system, and communication products.
The 1-Gbit Ethernet is the interface du jour. Most vendors with Ethernet support will have at least a few products with one or more interfaces on board. On the systems side, 10-Gbit Ethernet is the hot ticket. However, it will be rare at this show as 1-Gbit Ethernet fabrics will dominate the large systems.
COTS CADRE Off-the-shelf form factors, including ATX, PC/104, VME, and AdvancedTCA, continue to steal the spotlight at the show.
SMA Computers' 3U CompactPCI CPU 1.2 is based on an 800-MHz Crusoe from Transmeta. It consumes less than 10 W and runs Windows XP and Linux at a price tag that's under $1000. Advantech presents its collection of System On Modules (SOMs), including the 933-MHz Pentium III-based SOM-4475 SOM-ETX. It also will show XScale-based SOMs. Kontron will have a wide range of small-form-factor ETXexpress, AdvancedTCA, and PC/104 boards and single-board computers (SBCs).
Look for new design trends, such as Pentek's Model 6821. This VME data-acquisition board has a 12-bit, 210-MHz analog-to-digital converter (ADC) linked to a pair of Virtex-II Pro FPGAs with built-in PowerPC processors. Thales Computers packs on an Altera EP1S10 FPGA with 64-kbyte integrated FIFO in its PMC-FPDP single-wide PMC. The card uses a PLX PCI 9656 PCI bridge chip and a 100-Mbyte/s linked list DMA engine.
Tern Inc. introduces its R-Drive, a 186-generation C/C++ programmed SBC aimed at industrial control and data-acquisition applications. And Moxa Technologies launches its NE-4120S/A Network Enabler (NE) embedded modules for Industrial Serial Devices. These link serial devices to 10/100M Ethernet networks.
Aaeon Electronics' gets into the act with its ITX-266 Embedded Mini ITX Socket 370-based Tualatin Board, which contains a VIA CLE266 processor, 2D/3D AGP 8X graphics, six-channel AC'97 audio, and three PCI slots. Diamond Systems' Hercules-EBX SBC also combines a VIA Eden Pentium-III class processor with a 32-channel 250-kHz analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and dc-dc power supply, enabling the system to run with an input voltage of 5 to 28 V. It incorporates a PC/104 expansion socket. Octagon Systems' PCS-620 SBC has a PC/104 socket as well. The board combines a low-power, 300-MHz Pentium with wireless, Ethernet, serial, and parallel I/O support.
HOT AND COOL DSP DSPs are out in force, ranging from fast and furious to cool and compact. Texas Instruments (TI) released the EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) chip set and reference design based on its OMAP platform. The 1-GHz TMS320C6414T, C6415T, and C6416T DSPs deliver 8 MMAC/s (million multiple accumulate operations) performance on 8-bit data. TI also offers the 72-MHz TMS320C64x part built using 90-nm technology.
Analog Devices takes the symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) DSP market by storm with its 750-MHz ADSP-BF561. Incorporating two identical Blackfin cores, the processor boasts a performance of 1500 MMACs per core. Larger SMP systems can be easily constructed using multiple chips.
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