• Maximum Data Rates up to 4 GB/sec with Gen 2 PCIe
• Wide-Range of 3U VPX Compact, Rugged COTS Solutions
• Fabric-Transparent Switch Enables High-Speed Data
• Transfers Using Popular Gigabit Protocols
• VPX PCIe Cable Adapter Connects VPX System to Host PC

UPPER SADDLE RIVER, NJ-April 13, 2010- Pentek, Inc. has introduced 14 products in their new family of 3U VPX boards for data acquisition, software radio and digital signal processing. These new boards offer flexible backplane fabric connections supporting maximum data rates of up to 4 GB/sec with PCI Express (PCIe) Generation 2 (Gen 2) and 2.5 GB/sec with other protocols. The 3U VPX form factor is compact and extremely well suited for avionics, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), shipboard and airborne radar, and signal intelligence applications.

According to Rodger Hosking, vice president of Pentek, “Pentek’s new VPX modules fully support the OpenVPX standard (VITA 65) for improved interoperability among vendors and long-term availability.” He went on to explain, “The latest embedded system designs have shifted strongly towards serial-fabric based architectures for faster board-to-board data transfers to handle higher signal bandwidths, and more powerful FPGAs and processors. Our new product line represents the industry’s highest performance and most comprehensive VPX offerings.

Unique 3U VPX Board Family Features

Each of the new 3U x8 VPX modules features a PCIe Gen 2 interface. The PCIe interface includes a bridge that provides PCIe lane-width negotiation for x1, x4, x8 or x16 data transfers over the VPX backplane. “This lane-width negotiation is very convenient,” said Marc Ruocco, product manager. “It lets our products easily adapt to different PCIe lane widths offered by other modules in the system.” 

All modules feature a fabric-transparent crossbar switch that delivers many benefits. First, it allows flexible assignment of the PCIe interface lanes to backplane connector pins so system integrators can easily match a diverse range of backplane topologies. Second, the switch supports other gigabit serial protocols for moving data, such as Xilinx Aurora and Serial Rapid I/O. The switch simply passes the gigabit serial traffic from one port to another, totally independent of any particular protocol. Multiple data streams can be sent through the switch simultaneously. Lastly, the switch allows all modules to act as a VPX switch, to manage serial fabric connections to and from other modules across the backplane.  

New Data Acquisition, Software Radio and FPGA VPX Boards

All of the first 14 products announced offer a distinctive feature set with a wide range of capabilities: high-speed A/D converters from 105 to 500 MHz with 12- to 16-bit resolution; Xilinx Virtex FPGA products; D/A converters to 800 MHz with 16-bit resolution; wideband and narrowband digital downconverters and upconverters with channel counts from 2 to 256; and multi-frequency clock synthesizers from 20 to 500 MHz.

• Model 5331: Dual 14-bit 105 MHz A/D, 16 Channel DDC and Virtex FPGA
• Model 5341: Dual 14-bit 125 MHz A/D, 4 Channel DDC, Dual 16-bit 500 MHz D/As, DUC and Virtex II-Pro FPGA
• Model 5341-420: Transceiver with Dual Wideband DDC and Interpolation Filter
• Model 5341-430: Transceiver with 256-Ch Narrowband DDC
• Model 5342: Quad 14-bit 125 MHz A/D, 16-bit 500 MHz D/A, DUC and Virtex 4 FPGAs
• Model 5342-428: Transceiver with Quad Multiband DDCs and Interpolation Filter
• Model 5350: Quad 16-bit 200 MHz A/D and Virtex 5 FPGAs
  Model 5351: Quad 16-bit 200 MHz A/D, 256 Channel DDC and Virtex 5 FPGAs
• Model 5352: Quad 16-bit 200 MHz A/D, 32 Channel DDC and Virtex 5 FPGAs
• Model 5353: Quad 16-bit 200 MHz A/D, 2- 4 Channel DDC and Virtex 5 FPGAs
• Model 5356: Dual 14-bit 400 MHz A/Ds, Dual 16-bit 800 MHz D/As, DUC and Virtex 5 FPGAs
• Model 5358: Dual 12-bit 500 MHz A/Ds, Dual 16-bit 800 MHz D/As, DUC and Virtex 5 FPGAs
• Model 5390: Multi-frequency 8-Output Clock Synthesizer
• Model 5308: VPX x8 PCIe Cable Adapter

Pentek’s 5308 VPX x8 PCIe Cable Adapter features a front-panel PCIe x8 cable interface that extends the PCIe backplane across a cable to an adapter card in a host PC. VPX modules appear as PCIe devices on the host PC, allowing engineers to quickly start developing VPX applications on low-cost workstations. The 5308 can also be used for host connections in deployed systems and for data links between multiple VPX card cages. 

Rugged VPX Solutions

These VPX products comply with the VPX REDI specification and can be supplied in both air-cooled and conduction-cooled versions. 

Software Support

The ReadyFlow Board Support package includes project files and examples to demonstrate all board features. ReadyFlow supports Windows, Linux and VxWorks operating systems. 

Pentek’s GateFlow FPGA Design Kit enables the onboard FPGA to be configured by the user for implementation of custom pre-processing functions such as FFTs, FIR filters and software-radio blocks. The kit includes VHDL source files and works in conjunction with the Xilinx ISE Foundation design tools.  

Pricing and Availability

The starting price for the Model 5308 VPX to PC Adapter is $5,490 USD. Data acquisition and software radio modules start at $11,400 USD. Lead time is 8 to 10 weeks ARO. 

About Pentek

Pentek develops, manufactures and markets innovative DSP systems to original equipment manufacturers, distributors and value-added resellers. Pentek offers powerful VME, VPX, VXS, PMC, XMC, cPCI, PCI, PCIe boards for data acquisition, software radio and digital signal processing featuring Texas Instruments C6000 DSPs, Freescale G4 PowerPCs and Xilinx FPGAs. Pentek’s I/O includes A/Ds, D/As, FPGAs, digital up/downconverters and more. Pentek equips all products with high-performance I/O including gigabit serial interfaces and offers strong DSP software support. 

Longmont, Colo., April 13, 2010 – Kozio, Inc. (www.kozio.com), the trusted technology leader for enabling the fastest path to reliable hardware for embedded designs through in-system diagnostics, today announced the expansion of its in-system diagnostics solution to support the PowerPC 460GTx and 460 SX storage processors from AppliedMicro Circuits Corporation. Kozio’s solution includes at-speed functional tests with interactive and automated interfaces. Targeted towards the storage, wireless and network industries, users of the 460GTx and 460SX processors are now able to take full advantage of Kozio’s kDiagnostics® Design Suite.

kDiagnostics is a packaged circuit board test solution, requiring zero design changes or extra equipment. 460GTx and 460SX users no longer have to write their own test code. Using kDiagnostics, a validation check list for PCI Express, DDR2, NAND, Ethernet, and other logic is produced for them in minutes. Kozio has leveraged over a million lines of code used by leading-edge customers, and built upon their experience with many PowerPC architectures.. The kDiagnostics Design Suite is usable across all product phases, enabling customers to get to market quickly with trusted and tested hardware.

“AppliedMicro’s 460GTx and 460SX processors deliver energy efficiency to embedded systems without sacrificing performance,” said Chris Bergen, Director of Systems Engineering, AppliedMicro Circuits Corporation. “We are pleased that the Kozio’s kDiagnostics solution now supports the PowerPC 460SX and 460GTx processors. The included kDiagnostics evaluation software in each 460SX / GTx Evaluation kits saves customers time and effort in the evaluation process, thus allowing them to focus on the development of reliable, high-performing embedded storage, wireless and networking products.”

“The AppliedMicro processors are very well suited for storage, wireless and networking applications. Kozio provides a proven packaged hardware verification solution for these customers,” said Joe Skazinski, President and CEO, Kozio Inc. We are ideally positioned to support all custom designs that are taking advantage of the AppliedMicro’s PowerPC processors.”

kDiagnostics® Design Suite

The complete Kozio solution is a suite of software tools for board diagnostics, binary image downloading, in-system programming, automated board testing, and power-on self-test. The Kozio architecture has two main components: a target diagnostics application and one or more host applications. kDiagnostics Design Suite includes kDiagnostics – a binary application personalized to your hardware, that executes from the CPU on your processor-based embedded system – and a single floating license of ValidationAssistant^TM– a host-based application that provides a graphical user interface for interactively executing tests, downloading images, performing in-system programming of devices such as Flash memory, and troubleshooting assembly or design errors.

Price and Availability

Kozio’s kDiagnostics Design Suite with the 460 GTx and SX support is available immediately. The price for the royalty-free kDiagnostics Design Suite, fully personalized to run on customer’s custom board, starts at $14,950.

AppliedMicro PowerPC™460 SX Embedded Processor

With speeds of up to 1.2GHz, the PowerPC 460SX embedded processor offers a powerful mix of high bandwidth, design flexibility and robust features. With three PCI Express interfaces, an on-chip DDR2 SDRAM controller, I2O messaging unit, RAID 5 and RAID 6 acceleration hardware, storage and network encryption engines, and a rich peripheral mix, the PowerPC 460SX embedded processor is ideally suited for RAID controllers, Storage Area Networking (SAN) equipment, iSCSI, NAS, and other embedded storage and networking applications.

About Kozio, Inc.

Kozio is the trusted technology leader for enabling the fastest path to reliable hardware for embedded designs through in-system test and diagnostics. Pre-configured to your unique system, Kozio’s out of the box suite of software tools provide development teams an embedded at-speed validation and interactive debug suite. A comprehensive functional production test for printed circuit boards delivers the quality assurance manufacturer’s needs for product shipment. The configurable Power-On Self-Test solution supports extensive in-field hardware validation. At each step, full validation and fault isolation details are delivered within seconds. Kozio provides their customers significant resource savings, along with the confidence to ship reliable hardware faster in today’s competitive markets.