VMetro displayed three new products related to high-performance recording systems. The first was the solid-state VMDrive. The PMC-FPGA05-ADC1 module provides high-speed data acquisition while the Vortex M6000 VME/VXS recorder stores incoming data on Fibre Channel RAID arrays.
The VMDrive (Fig. 1) is offered in 6U VME and CompactPCI form factors. The interface is a dual channel, 2-Gbit/s Fibre Channel with a bandwidth of 70 Mbytes/s. 40-Mbyte and 80-Mbyte rugged versions are available in conduction-cooled or commercial air-cooled environments. It also meets MIL-STD810F shock and vibration requirements, allowing it to be used in the U.S. Army's Apache AH-64D attack helicopter.
VMetro has a range of data acquisition products, and the PMC-FPGA05-ADC1 (Fig. 2) is the latest addition. This PCI mezzanine card (PMC) has a 133-MHz PCI-X interface to a Xilinx XC5VLX110 Virtex-5 FPGA. The FPGA has access to three banks of QDRII SRAM (8 Mbytes per bank) and two banks of DDR2 SDRAM (128 Mbytes per bank). It can handle analog data, via a pair of 14-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADC), and digital inputs as well. Pricing for the PMC-FPGA05-ADC1 is $7995.
Systems requiring even more bandwidth may take advantage of the 6U VME/VXS-based (VITA-41) Vortex M6000 VME/VXS recorder (Fig. 3). Using dual 4-Gbit/s or quad 2-Gbit/s Fibre Channel ports, the board can record at speeds up to 720 Mbyte/s. The XMC/PMC sites can utilize PCI Express or PCI-X/PCI interface to modules such as the PMC-FPGA05-ADC1. The system can be programmed using a web browser and software support for VxWorks, and Linux is available. Pricing for the Vortex M6000 recorders starts at $21,990.
For more information, visit VMetro.