Conduction-Cooled SBC Steps Up With 600-kgate FPGA

The latest-generation G4 Motorola 7455 series PowerPC with AltiVec RISC microprocessors—the PPC G4D COTS single-board computer (SBC)—features processor speeds exceeding 1 GHz and a 600-kgate user-programmable FPGA. Over 1.6 GFLOPS of computing power is provided without sacrificing on-board I/O or expansion. It integrates up to 2 Mbytes of external L3 cache per processor. Breaking the 30-W power-dissipation limit of older conduction-cooled boards, the PPC G4D uses a thermal plane cooling design that effectively doubles the board's conduction surface area. This increase in area is accomplished by cutting the thermal impedances in half without breaking any of the 6U by 160-mm Eurocard design standards and specifications. In addition, the SBC comes with an on-board dual-redundant Mil-Std-1553 port. Dual PMC sites enhance user-customized functionality. To meet requirements for technology insertion and high-speed data communications, all backplane I/O lines are impedance-matched and balanced to minimize differential latency. The PPC G4D operates from −40°C to 75°C. Pricing for the PPC G4D development board starts at $7500 each.