Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing (CWCEC) has announced a new rugged FPGA PMC (or PCI mezzanine card) intended to simplify and speed up the capture, processing, and output of data derived from high-speed sensors such as electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) and radar systems.
| Another input/output option for ProWare PMC-440 is four RocketIO transceivers accessible via the module’s Pn4 connector that support throughput rates up to 1 GB/s. |
Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing (CWCEC) has announced a new rugged FPGA PMC (or PCI mezzanine card) intended to simplify and speed up the capture, processing, and output of data derived from high-speed sensors, such as electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) and radar systems. ProWare PMC-440 features an on-board field-programmable gate array (FPGA) that reportedly delivers up to 20 billion operations per second performance for fast Fourier transform (FFT) and digital signal processor (DSP) filter functions.
Used as a front-end sensor I/O interface and as a DSP mezzanine module in VMEbus and CompactPCI embedded systems, ProWare PMC-440 can be configured with either of two versions of Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA—the XC2VP20 (9,280 logic slices/88 18×18 multipliers) or XC2VP40 (19,392 logic slices/192 18×18 multipliers). The module uses a 64-bit, 66 MHz PCI interface with support for PCI-X, and provides a legacy bus interface for other proprietary DSP interfaces.
“The PMC-440 offers military/aerospace system integrators a cost-effective, off-the-shelf solution,” says Lynn Patterson, vice president and general manager of Modular Solutions, CWCEC. “With its integrated combination of hardware, FPGA IP modules, and driver software, the PMC-440 can save users man-years of development effort.”
Available in both air-cooled and conduction-cooled versions, ProWare PMC-440 input/output options include four front-panel RocketIO transceivers with aggregate peak throughput up to 1.6 GB/s. The card also includes 30 LVDS/LVTTL (low-voltage differential interface and transistor-to-transistor logic) ports via the front panel (and 48 LVDS/LVTTL ports via the Pn4 connector). However, front panel I/O options are only available on the air-cooled module version. Other features include 256 Mb of 32-bit DDR266 SDRAM, temperature sensor, current sensor, and four indicator LEDs.
The card is user-programmable with CWCEC’s ProWare Design Kit (PDK), which offers a library of IP modules, Wind River VxWorks driver, simulation testbench, a reference design, and test cable. ProWare PMC-440 is available air- and conduction-cooled models, ruggedized to different levels. Pricing starts at $4,250 for a quantity of one.
—Frank J. Bartos, executive editor, Control Engineering, [email protected]
