News and New Products

Quad-core computer features five PCIe lanes

By Warren Webb, Technical Editor -- EDN, 6/21/2007

Although many embedded-system designers have for years relied on the standard desktop computer and its PCI bus as a project starting point, rising performance expectations are changing the landscape. Parallel-bus-bandwidth limitations and high-performance-processor technologies have forced system designers to adopt the latest serial-board-to-board-communications strategies. The PICMG (PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group) 1.3 specification solves the bandwidth problem by replacing the backplane-parallel-bus interfaces with high-speed PCIe (PCI Express) serial links.

To meet these new bandwidth requirements, Adlink Technology recently announced the PICMG 1.3-compliant NuPro-965 system-host board, which supports the Intel Core Quad and Core2 Duo family of processors. Four onboard DIMM slots support as much as 8 Gbytes of dual-channel DDR2-800 RAM with a peak transfer rate of 12.8 Gbytes/sec. With a compatible backplane, the board supports 10-Gbps data transfers to and from external I/O cards and memory. The NuPro-965 integrates a 3-D graphics engine and a 16-lane PCIe interface for additional high-end-graphics options. The device also has four additional one-lane PCIe interfaces for high-bandwidth-I/O applications, two Ethernet connectors for redundancy, support for four 3-Gbps SATA storage devices, four USB 2.0 ports, and an UltraATA IDE interface. Prices for the NuPro-965 start at $460.