PowerPC Board Targets Defense Apps

This non-DSP-based signal processing board is well-suited for use in aircraft weapons control, mission computer, array processing, FLIR, and other high-end computing systems. The VME/4100 quad PowerPC high-performance card excels at complex decision-making RISC processor operations with comparable performance for intensive DSP-type functions, much like a conventional DSP/RISC board combinations. Unlike combination systems, however, the use of a single PowerPC platform provides a unified development environment to simplify system development and reduce board count. Four superscalar Motorola MPC603r PowerPCs operating at 200 MHz form the engine of the VME/4100, and processor nodes are connected together on the board's PCI bus for rapid inter-processor communication and data transfers. For code and data storage, each node has access to local bands of 8 MB SDRAM and up to 8 MB of flash. Communications are Fibre Channel, Ethernet and RS-232 interfaces. Three levels of ruggedization are available.