CHATSWORTH, CA – October 15, 2010 –Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing (CWCEC), a business group of Curtiss-Wright Controls and a leading designer and manufacturer of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) VME, VPX, OpenVPX™ and CompactPCI products for the rugged deployed aerospace and defense market, has announced the CHAMP-FX3, the first rugged, high-performance FPGA OpenVPX™ 6U VPX board that features dual Xilinx® Virtex®-6 FPGAs. Since the introduction of its first 6U FPGA card in 2005, CWCEC has been a leader in the development of rugged FPGA-based computing products. The CHAMP-FX3 board is CWCEC’s 3rd generation FPGA product leveraging the experience of those prior generations.
Available in both conduction-cooled and air-cooled versions, the CHAMP-FX3 provides dense FPGA resources combined with general purpose processing, I/O flexibility and support for multi-processing applications. It speeds and simplifies the integration of advanced digital signal and image processing into embedded systems designed for demanding Radar Processing, Signal Intelligence (SIGINT), ISR, Image Processing, Electronic Warfare applications.
“The performance and user-programmability of FPGAs is ideal for today’s demanding image and signal processing applications,” said Lynn Bamford, vice president and general manager of Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing. “Our new CHAMP-FX3 delivers the most advanced FPGA processing available today in a COTS rugged platform. By utilizing Xilinx’s latest FPGAs, the CHAMP-FX3 almost doubles both the FPGA logic and DSP capacity as well as the available processing bandwidth of the existing products in the market place today. Combining the capabilities of this card with our FMC product-line provides customers with the complete solution for front-end digital signal processing.”
“The Virtex-6 FPGA family offers system designers the performance levels needed to handle the toughest real-time signal processing tasks due to its advanced DSP, Memory and routing resources.” said Xilinx senior manager, Platform Solutions, Raj Seelam. “Curtiss-Wright Controls’ CHAMP-FX3 products combine these capabilities with industry-standard FMC sites, allowing customers to optimize their FPGA-based applications with the performance and I/O choices they need.”
The CHAMP-FX3 is the next generation in CWCEC’s family of user-programmable FPGA-based computing products designed to meet the needs of challenging embedded high-performance digital signal and image processing applications. The CHAMP-FX3 combines the dense processing resources of two large Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGAs (SX475T or LX550T) with a powerful AltiVec™-enabled dual-core Freescale Power Architecture™ MPC8640D processor on a rugged 6U OpenVPX™-compatible (VITA 65) form factor module.
The CHAMP-FX3 complements this processing capability with a rich assortment of rear-panel I/O and memories, including a Serial RapidIO® (SRIO)-based switching fabric, 16 high-speed serial links per FPGA, and 20 pairs of LVDS links to the backplane that can be used to support high-speed parallel interface such as Camera Link®.
For system expansion, the board also provides two (2) FMC sites (or a single FMC/VITA 57 site) and a PCI Express® (VITA 42.3) or Seral RapidIO (VITA 42.2) XMC site. The FMC sites have been enhanced to support the next generation of FMC cards with 80 pairs of differential signals. This combination of enormous processing density and I/O capacity and flexibility make the CHAMP-FX3 an ideal choice for many commercial or rugged embedded applications including radar, signal intelligence, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) platforms.
CHAMP-FX3 Performance Features:
- 6U OpenVPX (VITA 65)
- Dual user-programmable Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGAs (SX475T or LX550T)
- With attached DDR3 and QDRII+ memories
- Freescale Power Architecture MPC8640D processor
- Two (2) Mezzanine sites with support for FMC (VITA 57), or one FMC and one XMC site (VITA 42)
- On-board SRIO 1.3 switch
- 16 off-board high speed serial links to each FPGA and 12 on-board high speed serial links between FPGAs.
- Thermal sensors for monitoring board temperatures
- Sensors for monitoring board power consumption
- Support for ChipScope™ Pro and JTAG processor debug interfaces
- Multi-board synchronous clock
- Continuum IPC – inter-processor communications middleware available
- Continuum Vector subroutine library available
Software Support:
Software support for the CHAMP-FX3 includes BSPs for VxWorks® and Linux®. To ease and speed application development, CWCEC also offers its FusionXF BSP and FPGA design kit. Additional development support includes highly-optimized IP Blocks, development environment, reference designs, scriptable simulation test benches and software libraries.
Early Access Units will be available in Q1 2011.
About Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing
Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing is the industry’s most comprehensive and experienced single source for embedded solutions, ranging from Processing, Subsystems, Data Communication, DSP, and Video & Graphics to the most advanced board level components and fully integrated custom systems. The Embedded Computing group serves the defense, aerospace, commercial and industrial markets and is part of Curtiss-Wright Controls Inc.
About Curtiss-Wright Controls, Inc.
Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Curtiss-Wright Controls is the motion control segment of Curtiss-Wright Corporation (NYSE: CW). With manufacturing facilities around the world, Curtiss-Wright Controls is a leading technology-based organization providing niche motion control products, subsystems and services internationally for the aerospace and defense markets. For more information, visit http://www.cwcontrols.com/.
