January 15, 2007 – Long Beach, California – Thales, a leading provider of VMEbus and CompactPCI single-board computer (SBC) products and systems, unveiled the leverage of the PowerNode5 during the 2007 “Bus and Boards” event. The PowerNode5 is the first Dual 64-bit PowerPC970 VME blade server with back-plane Serial RapidIO and Serial FPDP connectivity. This product is ideally suited for intensive signal and data processing systems such as radar and imaging equipment.
The PowerNode5 is a rugged 6U VME PowerPC blade server featuring two 64-bit PPC970s running at 1.6GHz. It’s design is a clone of the IBM JS20 blade computer, providing the PowerNode5 with a very high level of performance and full binary compatibility with IBM JS20 blade servers, in a 6U form factor fully adapted to any of today’s embedded systems requirements. The PowerNode5 supports already both VxWorks 6.2 and Linux SMP kernel 2.6.
The PowerNode5 design includes a powerful, reliable Serial RapidIO switch fabric solution that allows the end-user the ability to interconnect computing nodes together inside a signal processing system. This Serial RapidIO technology reduces pin counts while providing a full duplex capability as well as a low latency, packet-based interconnect data push. Thales’ Serial RapidIO switch fabric is an original implementation with a distributed Serial RapidIO architecture: each PowerNode5 is equipped with a 4-port switch allowing a flexible, full-mesh interconnect of up to 4 PowerNode5s and scalable up to a 16-PowerNode5 machine. The resulting aggregate throughput reaches up to 25.6 GBytes/s, ideal for demanding signal processing applications found in radar, sonar and medical imaging applications.
The PowerNode5 features triple x4 Serial RapidIO links available on an enhanced performance P0 connector, compliant with legacy VME64x back-planes. The PowerNode5 is also available with a twin Serial RapidIO link plus a single Serial FPDP link option.
“With this new upgraded version of the PowerNode5, our customers can easily design scalable signal and data processing computing systems using blades fully interconnected on a legacy VME64x back-plane, when formerly the use of high speed mezzanines and front panel wiring were necessary..” Said Robert Negre, CTO of Thales Computers. “The early adoption by Thales of the Serial RapidIO and Serial FPDP technologies guarantee the high level of maturity and the short lead time of this new product.” The current version of PowerNode5 blade computing node is currently shipping with an entry-level unit price of USD 9670.
About Thales Thales is a leading international electronics and systems group, serving defence, aerospace, security and services markets worldwide. The Thales Group employs 60,000 people throughout the world and generated revenues of €10.3 billion in 2005. Thales computers activities include development of commercial and ruggedized VMEbus & CompactPCI multiprocessing solutions based on PowerPC and Intel microprocessors. Thales’ products are optimized for a wide variety of applications in the military, aerospace, transportation, communications, and industrial markets and are used by customers worldwide, including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, Bombardier, Toshiba, BAE Systems, Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, MBDA, Finmeccanica, Thales Group, and others. For more information please visit our web site at www.thalescomputers.com.
