VMETRO Ships Industry First FPGA-Based PMC Card With Four Channels Of Fiber Optic

VMETRO, a premium provider of embedded real-time boards and sub-systems based on open standards like VME, PCI, CompactPCI and RACEway, today announced the PMC-FPGA03F, a 64-bit PMC module which utilizes Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA and fiber optic communications to provide application-specific processing coupled with long distance optical connectivity.

The PMC-FPGA03F is an FPGA-based PMC designed for engineers seeking maximum flexibility and optimal performance. When used in conjunction with a PMC-enabled processing board or an I/O Controller such as VMETRO's PowerMIDAS 5000, it is capable of delivering powerful application-specific processing and is thus suitable for a wide range of purposes. By directly coupling the fiber optic communications with a user programmable FPGA, the PMC-FPGA03F can perform a host of demanding signal processing tasks efficiently on the data before it reaches the host processor. These include FFTs and digital receiver functions for software radio, data compression and advanced protocol handling.

"The PMC-FPGA03F enables FPGA developers to directly interface to remote systems up to 10,000m apart, dramatically enhancing the capabilities of the onboard Xilinx Virtex-II Pro device and flexibility of the module itself," said Andy Stevens, VMETRO's Vice President of Processing Solutions.

PMC-FPGA03F offers the following features and benefits:

Powerful

• Xilinx Virtex-II Pro XC2VP50 FPGA
• Large SDRAM data buffers
• Fast QDR-II memory banks for efficient data calculations and look up
• I/O and pre-processing in a single PMC module

Flexible

• Four full duplex fiber optic serial links operating up to 3.125 Gbps
• Programmable transceivers supporting any compatible interface including
• Fibre Channel and Serial FPDP
• Options for both single and multi-mode optical transceiver configurations
• Parallel 64-bit user data I/O port

Easy to Use

• VxWorks, Windows and Linux Host Software Support
• Onboard Flash memory for ‘turn-key' configuration
• FPGA and Flash Programming Utilities for enhanced ease of configuration
• IP cores available for common functions such as FFTs and QR decomposition

The PMC-FPGA03F provides a flexible and highly-configurable processing solution for all types of embedded applications. By utilizing the PMC-FPGA03F, users gain best-of-breed I/O and processing capabilities and are better able to focus on the development of their own core intellectual property. The result is faster time-to-market, reduced cost and superior product differentiation.

Copper based communications are available through a sister product, the PMC-FPGA03 which has the added benefit of parallel data I/O ports through the front panel.

Source: VMETRO