Embedded News

Feb. 16, 2006

Quad Processor VPX Board Tackles Rugged DSP Chores Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing's CHAMP-AV6 6U VPX singleboard computer is designed for inclusion in a Serial RapidIO fabric. The board includes four Freescale 1.33-GHz 8641 PowerPC processors with DSP and Altivec vector processing support. It handles up to 2 Gbytes of DDR2 SDRAM per processor along with 512 Mbytes of flash memory. Also, it offers 128 kbytes of nonvolatile RAM. Four Serial RapidIO ports connect to the VITA 46 backplane fabric. It features an on-board Gigabit Ethernet switch and interface, as well as a single XMC site with an x8 PCI Express interface. The CHAMP-AV6 starts at $16,500. Air-and conduction-cooled versions available. www.cwcembedded.com

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Software Targets Aerospace And Defense Systems Wind River's latest releases address a range of aeorspace and defense applications, starting with its Software Defined Radio (SDR) Platform. Based on the most recent VxWorks 6.2 kernel, the platform adds support for the CRC SDR Core Framework and the JTRS SCA Application Executive Profile, along with integration with Workbench, Wind River's Eclipsebased integrated development environment. Similar integration is part of the new Commercial-Grade ARINC 653 Platform and the Multiple Independent Levels of Security Platform. www.windriver.com Powerline Chips Available SmartLabs' Insteon powerline modem and RF chips are now available for $1.60 and $2.90, respectively. Insteon operates at 12.8 kbits/s in a mesh network that provides reliable communication for power and process control applications. www.smartlabsinc.com

About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

I still get a hand on software and electronic hardware. Some of this can be found on our Kit Close-Up video series. You can also see me on many of our TechXchange Talk videos. I am interested in a range of projects from robotics to artificial intelligence.