Advanced Mezzanine Card Uses Intel Core 2 Duo L7400

Combining a dual-core Intel processor and a Xilinx FPGA, the Momentum Series AXA-110 Advanced Mezzanine Card (AMC) from Mercury Computer Systems is well-suited for use in AdavncedTCA and MicroTCA systems. The AXA-110 is the first AMC to use the Intel Core 2 Duo L7400 processor, which at a core speed of 1.5 GHz and a thermal design power of 17 W, offers leading energy-efficient performance for small-form-factor embedded platforms.

The key to accessing the processor’s power is the connectivity provided by the serial fabric interfaces on the AMC. Using the Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA, the AXA-110 connects to up to 16 high-speed serial lines totaling 40 Gbytes/s. Combined with the available IP for PCI Express, Serial RapidIO, or XAUI, the full complement of serial links can be a hub for communication and coordination of the rest of the system. The new card supports registered DDR2-400 SDRAM with ECC. Up to 16 lanes of switch-fabric interfaces are implemented in multiple configuration options using Virtex-5 FPGAs in the FAT pipes region on the AMC.1/AMC.2/AMC.4-compliant fabric interface. Two 1000Base-BX Ethernet ports and two Serial ATA interfaces are provided in the common options region.