Virtex-6 ups processing power to military embedded

PARIS – Curtiss-Wright Controls Defense Solutions (CWCDS) said it has launched the VPX3-453, a full mil-temp Xilinx Virtex-6 based VPX DSP engine, to ease the integration of DSP and image processing into embedded systems designed for demanding radar processing, signal intelligence, ISR, image processing and electronic warfare applications.

Combining a Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGAs and a Freescale Power Architecture MPC8640D processor, the VPX3-453 small form factor DSP engine is suitable for SWaP-constrained environments and is designed to support the full -40 + 85 deg C rugged operating temperature range, CWCDS said.


Key features:
•    3U VPX-REDI VITA 48 1" pitch format
•    One user-programmable Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGA node (LX240T) with:
o    One bank of 300 MHz DDR2 SDRAM (256 MB), up to 2.4 Gbytes/s peak bandwidth
o    Two banks of 300 MHz QDR SRAM (36 MB total), up to 4.8 GBytes/s peak bandwidth
•    One dual-core Freescale Power Architecture MPC8640 PowerPC @ 1 GHz
•    XMC mezzanine site
•    On-board Gen2 PCI Express switch with 8-lane Gen2 connectivity to the 8640, 4-lane port to the FPGA, 4-lane port to the XMC site, and two 4-lan Gen2 ports to the backplane
•    Support for ChipScope Pro and JTAG processor debug interfaces
•    Continuum FXtools developer's kit offers FPGA design kit and Continuum firmware and BSP for VxWorks and Linux
•    Continuum Vector subroute library available
•    Conduction-cooled L200 version

Availability:
Production conduction-cooled units are expected to be available in the first quarter of 2013.

Datasheet and factsheet are available here.

See related links:
Optimizing FPGAs for power: A full-frontal attack

Design security yields secure FPGAs for mil/aero applications

How to mitigate military component supply issues

Debug a microcontroller-to-FPGA interface from the FPGA side

Ruggedized interconnects support military computing platforms

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