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LEESBURG, VA – September 29, 2008 — Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, a leading designer and manufacturer of rugged deployed commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) VME, and VPX products for the aerospace and defense market, has announced the availability of the VPX3-450, its first Xilinx Virtex®-5 FPGA-based 3U VPX (VITA 46/48) compute engine. The new VPX3-450, the latest member in the companys expanding offering of high-performance rugged small form factor 3U compute engines, is designed for demanding, high-performance signal and image processing applications including radar, sonar, and signal intelligence. Its small, compact 3U form factor makes it ideal for space, weight and power (SWaP) constrained applications on platforms such as UAVs and land vehicles. With software driver and IP development support from Curtiss-Wrights Continuum FXtools developers kit, the VPX3-450 significantly speeds and simplifies the development of custom FPGA designs.
“The VPX3-450 is the newest addition to our growing family of advanced 3U VPX single board computers, digital signal processing engines and FPGA compute engines. It provides unprecedented computational density and flexibility enabling military system designers to get their custom FPGA-based application out into the field faster,” said Lynn Patterson, Vice President and General Manager of Curtiss-Wrights Modular Solutions group. “It delivers Xilinxs most advanced FPGAs on the most powerful and rugged small factor board architecture available.”
“Xilinx is excited to see Curtiss-Wright be one of the first to deploy our high-performance, low power Virtex-5 FPGA. They have done this on the new 3U VPX form factor,” said Eric Sivertson, Senior Director for Aerospace and Defense at Xilinx “The rugged, compact 3U VPX3-450 is an ideal platform for rapidly deploying FPGAs into space and weight constrained deployed systems such as UAVs and software radio systems.”
The VPX3-450 combines the flexibility of a Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA (LX110T or SX95T) and the high performance general processing of a Freescale 8640 Power Architecture processor with VPXs support for high bandwidth serial switched fabrics such as PCI Express and Serial RapidIO (SRIO). The computing power of the Virtex-5 FPGA is complemented by a balanced mix of memory and I/O. Attached directly to the FPGA is one bank of DDR2 SDRAM and two banks of QDR-II+ SRAM. Two 4-lane high-speed serial ports to the backplane and an additional port to the XMC site provide a total of 7.5 GB/s bandwidth into and out of the FPGA in addition to the primary 4-lane PCI Express link to the on-board fabric.
The VPX3-450 builds on the success of Curtiss-Wrights 6U VPX CHAMP-FX2 FPGA computer engine, bringing many of the same features of the CHAMP-FX2 to the 3U form factor such as a high-performance FPGA node, a powerful AltiVec enabled Freescale dual-core Power™ processor, PMC/XMC mezzanine site, and the high bandwidth and built-in ESD protection of the VPX serial backplane fabric.
The VPX3-450 complements Curtiss-Wrights recently introduced VPX3-127 3U VPX single board computer and VPX3-215 ExpressReach 3U IO expansion carrier card by providing a high-performance signal and image processing solution for 3U form factor system designs. Together, these boards provide system integrators with a powerful, expandable card set for small-system development of deployable radar, signals intelligence, or software radio systems.
VPX3-450 Development Kit Support
The VPX3-450 offers a rich set of system and support software and tools designed specifically to ease the developer’s task of integrating FPGA-based computation into a larger heterogeneous multicomputer application. Software and development tools for the VPX3-450 are part of Curtiss-Wrights Continuum Software Architecture (CSA). The Continuum FXtools package contains the full Continuum Firmware and BSP package, plus additional VPX3-450 specific support libraries for the 8640 processor using such off-the-shelf operating systems as VxWorks® and Linux™.
The Continuum FXtools package also provides a set of highly optimized IP blocks (memory control, serial and LVDS interfaces, etc.), FPGA-specific function libraries (configuration, command bus mappings, etc.) and a scriptable FPGA simulation environment. Because it eliminates the task of writing time-consuming low-level interface code, typically a complex chore for multicomputer platforms, Continuum FXtools slashes the time and effort it takes to integrate a custom FPGA calculation blocks into a large multicomputer
In addition, the CSA includes the Continuum Vector algorithm library, which provides the cards onboard Freescale 8640 Power Architecture processor a rich set of optimized signal and image processing functions utilizing the AltiVec unit.
Ruggedization Levels
The VPX3-450 is designed to operate in rugged environments and is available in air- and conduction-cooled formats. Innovative cooling techniques are employed to handle high performance FPGA implementations. Rugged or commercial, the VPX3-450 provides the developer with a flexible, high-performance computing platform in either a stand-alone or heterogeneous multicomputing environment. When combined with the various software packages, the developer can expect significant time-to-market/time-to-deployment improvements due to the high-performance IP blocks, tools, and communications infrastructure.
VPX3-450 Features:
* User-programmable Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA node (LX110T or SX95T):
– One bank of DDR2 SDRAM (512 MB). Up to 2.2 Gbytes/sec
– Two banks of QDR-II+ SRAM (36 MB total). Up to 4.4 GBytes/sec
– Two 4-lane 3.125 GHz serial links to the backplane
– One 4-lane PCI Express link to the on-board switching fabric
– 18 pairs (36 pins) of discrete LVDS signals to the backplane
* One Dual-core Freescale 8640D processor node
– 1 GHz
– Up to 1 GB of DDR2 with ECC
– 256 MB of flash with write protection for user code, data, or FPGA bitstreams
– Protected backup flash
– Two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, factory configurable to either 1000 Base-T or 1000 Base-X
– Two EIA-232 serial ports
– Connections to the FPGA configuration bus and command/control bus
* On-board PCI Express switch
– 8-lane port to the 8640 processor node
– 4-lane port to the FPGA node
– 8-lane port to the XMC site
– Two 4-lane ports to the backplane. One is factory-configurable to be Serial RapidIO
* XMC site
* Sensors for monitoring board temperatures and FPGA power consumption
* Support for ChipScope Pro and JTAG processor debug interfaces
* Multi-board synchronous clock
* Continuum FXtools for the VPX3-450
– FPGA design kit with highly-optimized IP Blocks, development environment, reference designs, scriptable simulation test benches and software libraries
– Continuum Firmware and BSP for VxWorks and Linux and systems library kit for the 8640 processor
* Continuum Vector subroutine library available
* VITA 48 1” pitch format
* Range of air and conduction-cooled ruggedization levels available
Pricing for the VPX3-450 starts at $12,850. Availability is Q1 2009.
Sales inquiries: Please forward all Sales and reader service inquiries to Jerri-Lynne Charbonneau, Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, Tel: (613) 254-5112; Fax: (613) 599-7777; e-mail: [email protected].
For editorial information regarding Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing products or services, contact John Wranovics, Director of Public Relations, Curtiss-Wright, Tel: (925) 640-6402; email. [email protected]. Web site: www.cwcembedded.com.
About Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing
Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing is the industrys most comprehensive and experienced single source for embedded solutions, ranging from Processing, Subsystems, Data Communication, DSP, and Video & Graphics to the most advanced board level components and fully integrated custom systems. The Embedded Computing group serves the defense, aerospace, commercial and industrial markets and is part of Curtiss-Wright Controls Inc. For more information about Curtiss-Wright visit www.cwcembedded.com.
About Curtiss-Wright Controls, Inc.
Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Curtiss-Wright Controls is the motion control segment of Curtiss-Wright Corporation (NYSE: CW). With manufacturing facilities around the world, Curtiss-Wright Controls is a leading technology-based organization providing niche motion control products, subsystems and services internationally for the aerospace and defense markets. For more information, visit www.cwcontrols.com.