VxWorks system supports Pentek 4207 processor

Coupling the leading real-time operating system (RTOS) for embedded systems to this PowerPC and FPGA platform stems from its target applications and wide market acceptance.

The new VxWorks Board Support Package (BSP) provides software developers with a complete library of hardware-initialisation, control and application functions fully compatible with Wind River's Workbench development environment.

Rodger Hosking, vice-president of Pentek, said: 'VxWorks adds low-latency and deterministic real-time control of the many hardware resources and interfaces available on the Model 4207.

'Engineers familiar with this system and Tornado development tools can boost productivity to speed application development.' The Model 4207 is designed for connectivity.

The fabric-transparent, zero-latency crossbar switch connects the PowerPC, XMC module sites, the VXS connector, front-panel optical transceivers, Fibre Channel controller, and FPGA ports together using high-speed Gbit serial data paths.

Marc Ruocco, Pentek product manager, said: 'The switch simply passes the Gbit serial traffic from one port to another, totally independent of any particular protocol.

'Multiple data streams can be sent through the switch simultaneously, even if they have different protocols.

'For example, the two front-panel optical ports can be connected to the Fibre Channel controller to support an 800MB/sec VxWorks file system on an attached disk array.' The Model 4207 gives designers extraordinary power, speed and connectivity in a single-slot solution, making it suited for wideband, data acquisition and recording, real-time digital signal processing and software radio applications.

The Model 4207 is equipped with either a single-core MPC8641 or a dual-core MPC8641D executing at a maximum frequency of 1.5GHz.

These Altivec Freescale PowerPC processors perform 128-bit parallel processing and deliver DSP floating-point processing rates of up to 12,000 GFLOPS.

The processor includes built-in Gbit serial fabric support for 4x Serial RapidIO.

The Model 4207 includes an optional on-board Xilinx Virtex-4 FX Series FPGA, the XC4VFX60 or XC4VFX100.

Two 4X RocketIO ports provide high-speed serial paths between the FPGA and the crossbar switch for connection to other parts of the board, including the processor, VXS interface and XMC sites.

A built-in Xilinx Aurora protocol engine, DMA controller and PCI-X interface simplify data transfers to and from the FPGA and two 256 MB banks of DDR2 SDRAM attached to the FPGA.

Developers can take advantage of unused FPGA resources to implement custom signal-processing algorithms with Pentek's Gateflow FPGA Design Kit.

The kit includes VHDL source files and works in conjunction with the Xilinx ISE Foundation design tools.

The 4207 is compatible with any Pentek, COTS VME, VXS, PMC or XMC modules, all fully supported with compatible VxWorks drivers.