Getting back to the board itself, the PowerCore CPCI-680 is the first product from Force Computers to use the Sentinel technology. "Customers who want to have a very powerful real-time system normally have to purchase a system-slot controller and I/O peripheral boards," says Gerhard Mayr, product marketing manager. "Often, these are not compatible with each other, and software engineers have problems developing the code to handle two different products. One of the key features of the CPCI-680 is that customers can leverage off the Sentinel bridge by just using a single product. One board runs in the system slot and an identical board runs in the peripheral slot."
The CPCI-680 is a PowerPC-based single-board computer. It's not based on just any PowerPC, but Motorola's supercomputer-on-a-chip—the G4 running at 400 MHz. It has a 128-bit-wide level-2 cache (up to 2 Mbytes) running at half the processor speed.
Mayr points to the power consumption of the G4. The PowerPC already had very high performance while consuming very low power. Now the G4, considered a supercomputer because it processes one-billion floating-point operations per second, consumes only 5 W. This helps to alleviate cooling problems and also reduces power-supply demands. "It's really an advantage," states Mayr.
The G4 also contains AltiVec technology, an on-chip 128-bit vector-processing unit. "In the embedded world, this AltiVec technology can easily be used for ongoing floating-point operations, such as media processing and vector graphics. A speech-compression algorithm is a good example," states Mayr. "We have gotten feedback from customers telling us that they can save on their DSP development by using the AltiVec technology."
To boost performance, the company is using the latest synchronous DRAM technology. It will be 100 MHz at first, but scalable up to 133 MHz in the next four to five months. The board is able to handle up to 1 Gbyte in a single slot. "Who needs a gig for real-time applications?" asks Mayr, rhetorically. "Telecom and datacom come to mind. Take unified messaging systems, for example, where you have a huge database that needs to run very fast. You want to eliminate accesses to the hard drive. Here, the gigabyte of memory is absolutely essential."
The CPCI-680 has up to 256 Mbytes of memory on board. A memory module can go on top of that, should the user need more. For previous-generation boards, Force invented the stackable memory module. Customers can maintain their investment in memory by just placing another module on top of the one that's already installed.
The CPCI-680, a single-slot 6U card, includes two Fast Ethernet controllers (Fig. 2). According to Mayr, developers of telecom applications often want two independent Ethernet interfaces: one for diagnostics and the other for transferring data. The board also offers 16-Mbyte flash and an optional IDE flash-disk socket. Each board has two PCI mezzanine-card slots and two serial interfaces. Other variants offer an on-board, fast-wide SCSI-2 and four additional serial interfaces for extended communication and mass-storage needs.
As for software support, the CPCI-680 supports such real-time operating systems as LynxOS, OSE Delta, pSOSystem, and VxWorks/Tornado. Also important is its support for Unix-type operating systems, such as Linux.
So what are the target applications for the CPCI-680? Aside from those already mentioned, Force is targeting IP telephony gateways, access concentrators and DSL access multiplexers, and ATM or IP Layer-3 data-communication switches. It's also aiming at Internet routers, virtual-private-network servers, voice-over-IP systems, and systems that do speech processing and recognition as well as image and video processing. Look for it to pop up in control and data-processing functions in base-station controllers and transceiver stations in wireless local loops, as well as any other real-time applications that require scalable multi-computing capability.
Price & Availability
The 400-MHz PowerCore CPCI-680, with 128-Mbyte synchronous DRAM, 2-Mbyte L2 cache, 16-Mbyte flash memory, two PMC slots, two 10BaseT-/100BaseT-X Ethernet interfaces, and two RS-232 channels costs $3995. It will be available in the first quarter of this year.
Force Computers Inc., 5799 Fontanoso Way, San Jose, CA; (408) 369-6000; fax (408) 371-3382; www.forcecomputers.com.
Getting back to the board itself, the PowerCore CPCI-680 is the first product from Force Computers to use the Sentinel technology. "Customers who want to have a very powerful real-time system normally have to purchase a system-slot controller and I/O peripheral boards," says Gerhard Mayr, product marketing manager. "Often, these are not compatible with each other, and software engineers have problems developing the code to handle two different products. One of the key features of the CPCI-680 is that customers can leverage off the Sentinel bridge by just using a single product. One board runs in the system slot and an identical board runs in the peripheral slot."
The CPCI-680 is a PowerPC-based single-board computer. It's not based on just any PowerPC, but Motorola's supercomputer-on-a-chip—the G4 running at 400 MHz. It has a 128-bit-wide level-2 cache (up to 2 Mbytes) running at half the processor speed.
Mayr points to the power consumption of the G4. The PowerPC already had very high performance while consuming very low power. Now the G4, considered a supercomputer because it processes one-billion floating-point operations per second, consumes only 5 W. This helps to alleviate cooling problems and also reduces power-supply demands. "It's really an advantage," states Mayr.
The G4 also contains AltiVec technology, an on-chip 128-bit vector-processing unit. "In the embedded world, this AltiVec technology can easily be used for ongoing floating-point operations, such as media processing and vector graphics. A speech-compression algorithm is a good example," states Mayr. "We have gotten feedback from customers telling us that they can save on their DSP development by using the AltiVec technology."
To boost performance, the company is using the latest synchronous DRAM technology. It will be 100 MHz at first, but scalable up to 133 MHz in the next four to five months. The board is able to handle up to 1 Gbyte in a single slot. "Who needs a gig for real-time applications?" asks Mayr, rhetorically. "Telecom and datacom come to mind. Take unified messaging systems, for example, where you have a huge database that needs to run very fast. You want to eliminate accesses to the hard drive. Here, the gigabyte of memory is absolutely essential."
The CPCI-680 has up to 256 Mbytes of memory on board. A memory module can go on top of that, should the user need more. For previous-generation boards, Force invented the stackable memory module. Customers can maintain their investment in memory by just placing another module on top of the one that's already installed.
The CPCI-680, a single-slot 6U card, includes two Fast Ethernet controllers (Fig. 2). According to Mayr, developers of telecom applications often want two independent Ethernet interfaces: one for diagnostics and the other for transferring data. The board also offers 16-Mbyte flash and an optional IDE flash-disk socket. Each board has two PCI mezzanine-card slots and two serial interfaces. Other variants offer an on-board, fast-wide SCSI-2 and four additional serial interfaces for extended communication and mass-storage needs.
As for software support, the CPCI-680 supports such real-time operating systems as LynxOS, OSE Delta, pSOSystem, and VxWorks/Tornado. Also important is its support for Unix-type operating systems, such as Linux.
So what are the target applications for the CPCI-680? Aside from those already mentioned, Force is targeting IP telephony gateways, access concentrators and DSL access multiplexers, and ATM or IP Layer-3 data-communication switches. It's also aiming at Internet routers, virtual-private-network servers, voice-over-IP systems, and systems that do speech processing and recognition as well as image and video processing. Look for it to pop up in control and data-processing functions in base-station controllers and transceiver stations in wireless local loops, as well as any other real-time applications that require scalable multi-computing capability.
Price & Availability
The 400-MHz PowerCore CPCI-680, with 128-Mbyte synchronous DRAM, 2-Mbyte L2 cache, 16-Mbyte flash memory, two PMC slots, two 10BaseT-/100BaseT-X Ethernet interfaces, and two RS-232 channels costs $3995. It will be available in the first quarter of this year.
Force Computers Inc., 5799 Fontanoso Way, San Jose, CA; (408) 369-6000; fax (408) 371-3382; www.forcecomputers.com.