Quad DSP board gives processor-hungry applications a performance boost

Quad DSP board gives processor-hungry applications a performance boost

Keywords: Blue Wave Systems, Defence, Data

Defence applications such as radar, sonar, SigInt (signal intelligence) and FLIR require the processing and handling of extremely large amounts of data very quickly. Combining flexibility with outstanding performance, Blue Wave Systems'new VME/C6420 DSP board is said to be ideal for high-end computing applications like these and other processor-intensive areas such as digital radio research,next generation mobile telephony base stations and test equipment.

The new board is available with a choice of four integrated C6201 fixed point or four C6701 floating point digital signal processors. According to Blue Wave Systems, at the heart of the VME/C6420 is a high speed multi-port crossbar which efficiently controls data flow both on- and off-board. The crossbar enables up to four 200Mbyte/s simultaneous on-board point-to-point links to be set up dynamically, connecting the DSPS, MPC860 "Power QUICC" control processor, PMC I/O, VME interface and expansion ports. A fifth off-board link can also be established simultaneously thus giving 1 Gbyte/s of total bandwidth.

All on-board control, signalling and data management is said to be taken care of by the "Power QUICC" processor minimising overhead on the DSPS. It has direct access to 2Mbytes of flash memory for embedded code and data storage. A bank of up to 16Mbytes of global SDRAM is shared between the four DSPS, control processor and I/O resources.

One strength claimed of the VME/C6420 is its range of I/O capabilities. In addition to a VME64 master/slave interface, the board's two industry standard PMC sites provide access to a wide range of analogue and digital I/O, sedal and network modules. Blue Wave is working with a number of third parties to provide a range of I/O daughterboards for the VME/C6420. These include Raceway,Fiberchannel and FPDP modules. The latter (FPDP) include high speed and multichannel ADC modules believed to be ideally suited to radar and sonar applications respectively.

Blue Wave provides customers with a choice of three levels of ruggedisation. These are commercial, air cooled, for benign environments; extended temperature,air cooled, for when things get a little rougher; and rugged, convection cooled,for the extremes of temperature and shock. All three variants are stated to be software compatible thus providing a smooth path from development to deployment.

The VME/C6420 is thought to be perfect for multiprocessor, multiboard systems. Boards can be linked together using Blue Wave's IPC fabric, a P2 backplane with integrated crossbar, that allows the VME/C6420s to communicate efficiently with one another at speeds up to 200Mbytes/s.

The new board supports a range of operating systems including Windows NT and VxWorks. The VME/C6420 is supplied with a host communications software that reportedly provides control, download and data transfer as well as host and C6000 interface libraries, drivers and boot loader. A comprehensive set of development tools is also available.

Further details are available from Blue Wave Systems. Tel: +44 (0) 1509 634444; Fax: +44 (0) 1509 634450; E-mail: shaslam@bluews.com