Sundance first to combine FPGA and Power-pc440 with PCI Express for PC/104

The Sundance Series 1 is the industry’s first product family architected around Xilinx multi-platform Virtex-5 devices with embedded PowerPC processor core. Two unique architectures are available: the SMT100 with 512Mbytes DDR2 SDRAM for data buffering and processing and the SMT105 that has an optimized mix of multiple QDR2 SRAM and DDR2 SDRAM memory banks for real-time signal processing tasks. The architectures also feature USB2.0 interface to the FPGA, RS232 interfaces, MicroSD/ Transflash, Fibre Optic modules, SATA ports, LVTTL I/Os, 32-bit PCI, 4-lane and 1-lane PCI Express links and stack-up or stack-down configurations for automatic detection. A range of IP cores are also available to support design integration and to accelerate time-to-market.

“Longevity is one of the hallmarks of PC/104 technology and the approach taken by Sundance is aligned to our strategy and vision of providing a stable, long-term supply of PC/104 modules from the vendor community,” said Jeff Milde, Executive Director, PC/104 Embedded Consortium. “As an associate of the Consortium I’m delighted that Sundance has reached its centenary PC/104 product and this benchmark adds to the breadth and depth of PC/104 products that are available to PC/104 customers.”

The Sundance PC/104 product family includes multichannel analog-to-digital digitizers for embedded sensor applications, imaging for hyper spectral camera devices onboard UAVs, DSP bricks with integrated RF front ends for small form factor portable radio transceivers and other high-speed MIMO RADAR, network communications modules and I/O peripherals. By building PC/104 products around Xilinx’s Virtex-5 FPGAs and by augmenting the devices with multiple DRAM and SRAM memory banks, intensive signal processing algorithms such as ultra long FFT engines can be implemented into the FPGA fabric to ensure real-time performance targets can be met while reducing system cost.

“When the PC/104 Consortium chose PCI Express as their standard for high speed bus in embedded applications it was because of its comprehensive market adoption, performance, scalability and growth potential,” said Flemming Christensen, Managing Director of Sundance Multiprocessor Technology Ltd. “Critically it provided a consistent and interchangeable path for the stackable PC architecture across the PC/104 Embedded Consortium's 104, EPIC, and EBX form factors. This foresight, and PC/104’s unique self stacking bus, has allowed the specification to mature, stand the test of time and enabled Sundance to grow and evolve a product family that now offers an incredible 100 modular product variations based upon the standard.”

To fast track design entry into the Sundance PC/104 product family, software support is provided that enables the USB 2.0 to interface and move data to/ from any host computer in the ‘Stand-Alone’ mode or use the SMT004 that will allow using integration into a desktop PC. Alternatively a PCI/104 Host Controller can be used to interface to Disk, Keyboard and Display. Sundance provides support for Windows 7 and Linux system environments and Xilinx ISE Webpack development software can be downloaded for free to target the Virtex-5 FX30T FPGA.