Halstenbek, Germany – July 19th, 2011. TEWS TECHNOLOGIES announces the introduction of the TAMC640, a standard single Mid-Size or Full-Size AMC module with a user-programmable LX50T, LX85T, or SX50T Virtex-5 FPGA. Designed for industrial, COTS, and transportation applications, where specialized I/O or long-term availability is required, the TAMC640 provides a number of advantages including a customizable interface for unique applications and a FPGA-based design to extend product lifecycle.
The integrated PCIe Endpoint Block of the Virtex 5 can be used to build an x1, x4 or x8 PCIe link via AMC Port 4-11. In addition, the implementation of other protocols like SRIO or XAUI is possible. AMC Ports 0 & 1, commonly used for Gigabit Ethernet, are also connected to the FPGA. The integrated Gigabit Ethernet MACs of the Virtex-5 allow fast and easy protocol implementation.
To allow direct board-to-board communication, AMC Ports 12-17 are connected to Virtex-5 I/Os, allowing AC-coupled LVDS communication with a port speed up to 1.0 Gb/sec.
For flexible front I/O solutions, the TAMC640 provides a VITA 57.1 high pin count FMC Module slot, allowing active and passive signal conditioning. All FMC I/O lines are directly connected to the FPGA, which maintains the flexibility of the Select I/O technology of the Virtex-5 FPGA.
Additionally the FPGA is connected to 2 banks of DDR2 DRAM and 1 bank of QDR-II SRAM. Multiple clocks from the AMC-interface, the FMC and from on-board sources are supplied to the FPGA. Configured by a flash device, the FPGA is in-system programmable and able to store multiple code versions. For security, the TAMC640 supports encrypted FPGA bitstream usage. Encrypted FPGA bitstreams cannot be copied or reverse engineered.
The IPMI Connectivity Records located inside the Module Management Controller (MMC) can be modified by the customer (e.g. via IPMI), to adapt to the different possible communication protocols (PCIe, SRIO, XAUI, …).
User applications can be developed using the design software ISE WebPACK from Xilinx.
TEWS Engineering Documentation TAMC640-ED for FPGA programming includes all information needed for customer specific FPGA programming with additional Constraints Files. The FPGA Development kit TAMC640-FDK provides ucf-files and well documented VHDL example applications. For OS level support, TEWS offers extensive software support for major operating systems such as Windows, LynxOS, Linux, Integrity, VxWorks, and QNX is available.
About TEWS TECHNOLOGIES
TEWS TECHNOLOGIES is a leading solutions provider of embedded I/O and CPU products based on open architecture standards such as PMC, IndustryPack® (IP), CompactPCI, standard PCI, AMC, and VME. TEWS has more than 30 years of experience designing and building turn-key embedded interface solutions using the philosophy to listen and respond to our customers’ needs. Using this ‘customer first’ approach, TEWS has developed a large number of standard and custom products for industrial control, telecommunication infrastructure, medical equipment, traffic control and COTS applications. TEWS’ line of embedded I/O solutions is available worldwide through a global network of distributors. For more information, go to www.tews.com.
