Parsec's latest addition to its range of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) PCI mezzanine cards (PMC), the PM431, is a single PMC module that makes use of two Altera Stratix FPGAs and five ZBT memories to provide a high-speed, high-bandwidth processing platform. It is ideally suited for software defined radio (SDR), WiMAX, radar, video and other computation and bandwidth intensive applications.
An EP1S25 Altera Stratix device (upgradeable to an EP1S40) implements a processing FPGA that provides a superior combination of logic and memory resources, DSP performance and I/O flexibility. Five 256Kx36 (9 Mb) ZBT memories (upgradeable to 18 Mb) individually connect to the processing FPGA, yielding 2,66 Gbytes/sec of memory bandwidth. From P4, 64 PMC user I/Os connect to the processing FPGA and are completely user configurable.
An EP1S10 Stratix FPGA implements a PCI-to-local-bus bridge that provides a 64-bit 66 MHz PCI bus interface and a versatile 66 MHz local bus. The PCI-to-local-bus bridge supports maximum PCI bandwidth (533 Mbytes/sec) to and from the processing FPGA via the target and DMA buses, eliminating the need for traditional front panel interfaces. The PM431 front panel contains four status LEDs and a JTAG header.
The EP1S10 Stratix FPGA firmware is factory programmed, while the processing FPGA is available to the user for custom firmware development.
The PM431 is shipped with local bus teference design firmware and example software that provide a starting point for custom user firmware and software development.
A Flash programming utility and optimised device driver for Windows 2000/XP is also included as part of the PM431 development suite. A Matlab API is available on request, with a DSP Builder interface currently undergoing development. Parsec provides custom firmware and software development services.
The unique dual FPGA design and versatile local bus of the PM431 provides a firmware development platform targeted at applications requiring high-speed processing, as well as high-bandwidth data throughput. Typical examples are DSP and communication functions like FFT, FIR filtering, digital up and down conversion, Viterbi and Turbo decoders, etc. The PM431 forms part of Parsec's StarFabric cPCI and PMC product range.
For more information contact Piet du Toit, Parsec, +27 (0)12 678 9740, [email protected], www.parsec.co.za.
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