CompactPCI boards feature Intel Core i7 family

Depending on the application requirements, a choice of processors is supported: the 2.53GHz Intel Core i7-610E; 2.0GHz Intel Core i7-620LE; and the 1.06GHz Intel Core i7-620UE.

Based on 32nm process technology and the Intel integrated memory/graphics controller architecture, the processors are from the Intel embedded roadmap, which offers at least a seven-year availability.

With up to 8Gbytes of DDR3-1066 ECC SDRAM, dual PMC/XMC sites, three Gigabit Ethernet ports, four SATA300 disk interfaces and dual head graphics, the PP 712/08x also offers rear I/O interfaces that are compatible with the PP 512/06x family, providing a continuing upgrade path.

In addition, the PP 712/08x can optionally support extended temperatures ranging from -40C to +85C.

The boards are particularly suitable for CPU intensive processing applications within the telecommunications, defence and homeland security market sectors.

The PP 712/08x family is based on the combination of the Intel Core i7 processor and an Intel platform controller hub, the Mobile Intel QM57 Express chipset.

This combination benefits from the integration of the graphics controller and the memory controller into the processor, resulting in reduced memory latency and improved performance-per-watt.

The Intel Core i7 processors feature Intel Direct Media Interface technology and Intel Flexible Display Interfaces to the PCH to provide simultaneous high-speed non-graphic traffic and video/graphic traffic.

The processors feature Intel Hyper-Threading technology to allow multiple simultaneous execution threads in each core and Intel Turbo Boost technology, which elevates performance for specific workloads by increasing processor core frequency on one core when the second core and/or graphics engine utilisation level is low.

The CPU and graphics engines have separate Turbo modes and by using simple BIOS setup options, the user can disable either or both of the turbo modes, or pre-set a bias towards one or the other feature.

For high-performance I/O processing, the PP 712/08x family supports two PMC/XMC sites, each PMC site supports up to 133MHz PCI-X operation as well as x8 PCI Express XMC interfaces.

As an option it is also possible to enable high-performance XMC modules to communicate with each other directly via the XMC Pn6 connectors between the two XMC sites independently of the main interconnecting buses.

The boards can operate as a system controller board, a peripheral board or as a satellite board (blade).

Support is also provided for PICMG 2.16 (Ethernet fabric), PICMG 2.9 (IPMI) and PICMG 2.1 (hot swap); the CompactPCI backplane interface operates at 33/66MHz PCI signalling speeds.

The PP 712/08x includes three 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet interfaces (one front and two rear) and the front panel also provides two USB 2.0, RS-232, dual head graphics via two digital (1600 x 1200) and analogue (2048 x 1536) interfaces.

The rear I/O connections, compatible with Concurrent Technologies' PP 512/06x, provide three further USB 2.0 ports, an RS-232 port, four SATA300 mass storage interfaces and an Intel High Definition Audio interface.

Other features are a watchdog timer, long duration timer, LAN boot firmware and options for an onboard 2.5in SATA300 disk and a Compactflash site.

For applications requiring rear I/O connections a transition module is available.

For ease of integration, the PP 712/08x family of boards support many operating systems, including Linux, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP Embedded, Windows XP, Solaris, VxWorks and QNX.