Quad DSP engine features switched-fabric data streams
By Warren Webb, Technical Editor -- EDN, February 16, 2006
Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing recently introduced the Champ-AV6, a VITA (VMEbus International Trade Association) 46 VPX-based DSP engine combining quad PowerPC 8641 devices with serial-switched-fabric communications capabilities. The Freescale (www.freescale.com) 8641 processor has dual integrated 64-bit memory controllers and the Altivec instruction-set extension, which executes as many as eight floating-point operations per cycle. With four 1.33-GHz 8641s, the Champ-AV6 delivers 42 Gflops of peak floating-point performance. Streaming-data-system applications will benefit from the board's 8.5-Gbyte/sec memory bandwidth and as much as 2 Gbytes of DDR SDRAM.
The VPX standard provides backplane connectors that can handle signaling speeds as high as 6.25 Gbps. The board's mezzanine site can accept either standard PMC modules or XMC modules featuring PCI Express with automatic detection of the module type. With PCI Express connectivity, the XMC site provides the high bandwidth to memory for high-performance graphics, networking, and data-acquisition modules.
Software for the Champ-AV6 includes support for operating systems including VxWorks, Linux, and Gedae. Curtiss-Wright provides signal-processing libraries and a high-performance interprocessor-communications library for message passing and bulk data transfers, extending to multiple boards connected through Serial RapidIO. Prices for the Champ-AV6 start at $16,500. Evaluation units will be available in the fourth quarter of this year.
Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, www.cwcembedded.com.
