News and New Products

Blade computer sports four cores

By Warren Webb, Technical Editor -- EDN, 4/24/2007

Aiming to boost the performance of applications in the telecommunications, medical-engineering, and transportation industries, MEN Micro recently released a new 6U, CompactPCI single-board computer featuring either one or two Intel Xeon dual-core processors operating at 1.66 GHz. You can use the hot-swappable D7 server blade as a peripheral-slot board; a 64-bit, 66-MHz PCI system board; or a 64-bit, 133-MHz PCI-X (PCI Extended) system board. The D7 allows multiple memory variants, including error-correcting DRAM, nonvolatile FRAM (ferroelectric random-access memory), SRAM, and NAND flash. The built-in PCI Express link drives the two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces on the front panel and one or two XMC (switched-mezzanine-card) modules. The D7 also supports 12-Gbps Ethernet connections without performance losses.

In addition to a front-panel USB slot, the D7 includes two serial and two parallel ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) interfaces for connection of mass-storage devices or CompactFlash. The D7 includes an FPGA for configuration of application-specific I/O functions, such as additional serial interfaces, graphics, fieldbus interfaces, and digital I/O. The price for the D7 is $5010, and delivery is within two weeks after receipt of order.