BusinessWire
January 16, 2006 08:00 AM US Pacific Timezone

VMETRO: Building Blocks for VXS/VITA 41 System Solutions Added to Phoenix Family

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 16, 2006--Today, VMETRO expanded the popular Phoenix VXS family of innovative products designed to enable system solutions for real-time multi-processors with high-speed serial communications. Complementing the already shipping Phoenix VPF1 Dual PowerPC, Dual Virtex-II Pro FPGA VME/VXS DSP board, the new products launched include:

-- The Phoenix CSW1 zero latency VXS switch card with fiber optic front panel I/O

-- The Phoenix 6821/6822 and 6826 215 MHz and 2 GHz VXS Analog-to-Digital converter boards with FPGAs

-- The Phoenix M6000 PowerPC VXS I/O Controller with Fibre Channel, FPGA and two XMC sites

-- The TransComm communications libraries and toolbox for system integration

Together with the Phoenix VPF1 FPGA/PowerPC multiprocessor VXS board, these new VXS boards make up a very powerful family of building blocks for real-time embedded applications. Phoenix products are available in air cooled and rugged conduction cooled builds variants as required by the customer's application.

The Phoenix CSW1 switch provides an innovative system solution with high-speed serial data links allowing the use of off-the-shelf VXS backplanes and optional front panel fiber-optic transceivers for flexible I/O options. Many signal processing applications require VXS boards interconnected with point-to-point connections in a custom VXS backplane that use a simple protocol like Aurora or Serial FPDP because they cannot afford the overhead and latency of a switched fabric. The downside is that each new application requires customers to bear the time and expense of developing a custom backplane, and if the configuration changes, a new backplane has to be developed. The Phoenix CSW1 solves these problems by allowing customers to use off-the-shelf VXS backplanes and defining the routing topology in the CSW1 rather than the backplane.

Analog data seamlessly integrates into Phoenix VXS Systems utilizing the Phoenix 6821/6822 and 6826 range of A/D converters. The key to these A/D converter products is that they utilize VXS connections to provide the high-speed board-to-board interconnects to move the large amounts of data they can capture. Customers' system development effort will be greatly simplified as a result of VMETRO integrating these A/D converter products into the Phoenix family with support for communication across the high-speed serial VXS links.

The Phoenix M6000 enables tailoring system I/O requirements to customer requirements. It offers a number of system functions including a "slot 1" controller Single Board Computer (SBC) or a high-performance intelligent PMC/XMC carrier. With it's optional 4Gb/sec Fibre Channel controller, it can also manage high performance data recording capabilities.

In addition to the new VXS boards, VMETRO has announced TransComm, a low-latency communication 'toolbox' to allow rapid deployment of VXS systems. TransComm enables high performance FPGA to FPGA and FPGA to PowerPC communication with high efficiency and low overhead and footprint. TransComm simplifies the development of the communications infrastructure for real-time systems and allows designers to focus on algorithms and system implementation. The FPGA IP blocks in TransComm are available for use on all VMETRO Phoenix boards as well as for customers to incorporate into their in-house designs.

VMETRO continues to be the VXS market leader, delivering the first working VXS products. The addition of these new products makes the Phoenix family of products ideal for building demanding real-time embedded computing solutions for applications such as radar, signal intelligence (SIGINT), electronic intelligence (ELINT), electronic warfare (EW) and real-time imaging applications. "With these additions to the Phoenix family our customers can quickly build very impressive signal processing systems," says VMETRO's Jeremy Banks (Product Manager for Processor and I/O Products). He adds, "The combination of high performance VXS, high performance FPGAs, A/D converters, XMC sites, 2eSST interfaces, 4 GB/s Fibre Channel links and TransComm communication suite enables our customers to bring their application performance to the next level."

Detailed Features:

-- Phoenix CSW1: VXS switch

-- Protocol agnostic zero latency switch

-- Up to 14 4X VXS payload links or 56 1X links

-- Up to 12 front panel fiber-optic or copper transceiver channels, each able to operate up to 3.2 GHz

-- VXS semi-static switch for deterministic operation

-- Real-time broadcast mode for synchronizing and sharing data across the system

-- Phoenix M6000: VXS payload intelligent carrier and recorder blade

-- Dual 4Gb/s Fibre Channel ports for high speed data recording

-- Dual XMC/PMC sites for I/O customization

-- 320 MB/s 2eSST VME interface

-- PowerPC 440SP processor and PCI Express switches to control data flow

-- Phoenix 6826: VXS payload high-speed analog I/O

-- One or two 10-bit, 2 GHz A/D converters

-- A user programmable Virtex-II Pro FPGA

-- Up to 1 GB DDR SDRAM

-- Multiboard synchronization

-- Phoenix 6821: VXS payload analog I/O

-- One 12-bit, 215 MHz A/D converters

-- Two user programmable Virtex-II Pro FPGAs

-- Multiboard synchronization

-- Phoenix 6822: VXS payload analog I/O

-- Two 12-bit, 215 MHz A/D converters

-- Two user programmable Virtex-II Pro FPGAs

-- Multiboard synchronization

-- TransComm

-- Multi-FPGA/Processor communications toolbox

-- Libraries optimized for embedded real-time communications

-- Low latency and deterministic

-- Supports the ability to integrate with user IP cores

Phoenix products are available 8-12 weeks ARO; contact VMETRO for availability of specific models.

About VMETRO

VMETRO provides integrators of high-end embedded computer systems with products and services, from development through deployment, with the highest levels of performance, innovation and reliability. The products are based mostly on open standards like VXS, PCI Express, VME, PCI and CompactPCI. Founded in 1986 in Oslo, Norway, and in the US since 1987, VMETRO is the world's largest manufacturer of bus analyzers for standard buses such as VME, PCI and PCI Express. VMETRO also offers an extensive line of high-performance signal processing solutions, real-time data recorders, PMC I/O controllers and modules for real-time data processing, acquisition and networking.

VMETRO has been traded on the Oslo Stock Exchange (Ticker:VME) since 1997. For more information, please visit www.vmetro.com.