TEK Microsystems PowerRACE-3A carrier cards combine PowerPC and FPGA processing engines with powerful PMC I/O capabilities.
“The announcement of the PowerRACE-3A is TEK Microsystems’ next step toward providing complete embedded systems,” said Andy Reddig, president and CTO of TEK Microsystems. “As the leader in both high performance PMC I/O modules and integrated I/O solutions for switched fabrics, we have been continually enhancing our technology to handle a larger and larger part of the embedded computing challenge. It’s the new embedded paradigm — using FPGAs and flexible, core-based switched fabrics. The PowerRACE-3A is a tightly integrated PowerPC-based platform that delivers customizable I/O with the convenience of built-in intelligent stream management. As a client-server solution, it includes a common API that provides rapid technology insertion with low integration risk and a seamless migration path.”
The PowerRACE-3A uses two 800 MHz 440GX PowerPC processors to support high throughput without incurring host processor overhead. Currently supporting the RACE++ interconnect fabric, future implementations will be fabric agnostic. An on-board fabric allows each PMC site to transfer data concurrently to off-board RACE++ ports, FPGA processing or to memory thereby eliminating fabric contention and maximizing overall system performance. Configured with any one of the more than 30 available TEK Microsystems PMC modules, the new PowerRACE-3A delivers unmatched speed and flexibility.
Included with the PowerRACE-3A is the tekX software environment, providing tools for fabric configuration, buffer management, data transfer, interprocessor communications, data storage/playback and integration of streaming FPGA and I/O modules. tekX reduces system development cycles by using a common API to shield the developer from the complexities of the fabrics and the hardware. The tekX environment supports all current PowerRACE models and will support integration of future products without application changes. The result is low integration risk and seamless technology upgrades.
