6U VPX/REDI Boards Enlist PowerPC Muscle

In addition to on-board Virtex-5 FPGAs, the HPE640 and HPE720 6U VPX/REDI hybrid processing engines employ Freescale's Power Architecture MPC8641D dual-core PowerPC processors. Both boards, available in air- and conduction-cooled versions, also provide front-panel I/O and VPX backplane connectivity. The HPE640 suits applications that stream data from sensors to FPGAs over point-to-point protocols. It packs two MPC8641D processors with a choice of two DSP-optimized Virtex-5 SX95T or LX155T devices. Each processor interfaces to 2 GB of DDR2 SDRAM and each FPGA has six direct banks of memory. Front panel I/O is via an FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC/VITA 57) site connected to one of the FPGAs. Other features include PCI Express links, a PCI Express switch, and a Gigabit Ethernet switch providing links to each processor as well as four links to the backplane. With an on-board Serial RapidIO switch and four x4 sRIO links to the backplane, the HPE720 supports a distributed switching system architecture for distributed multi-processing applications. The board supports a single MPC8641D PowerPC processor with two Virtex-5 FPGAs, 2 GB of DDR2 SDRAM, and front-panel I/O with support for either two FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC/VITA 57) sites connecting to the FPGAs or one FMC site and one XMC/PMC site. VMETRO INC., Houston, TX. (281) 584-0728.