New Low Power, RTCA-compliant SBC from Aitech Significantly Reduces Development Costs

Developed specifically for avionics, the C925 is fully-certifiable to both DO-178 (software) and DO-254 (hardware), making it ideal for safety and mission critical applications, such as flight and mission control computers into FAA-controlled airspace. In addition to reduced design costs, the C925 saves on DO-254 certification costs by minimizing the use on-board FPGAs.

As the latest evolution in Aitech’s C9xx family of rugged computing boards, the SBC is a drop-in upgrade for the popular C900 and C901 SBCs.

Featuring increased processing power without additional heat generation, the C925 incorporates a highly integrated PowerQUICC III 8548E processor that can be hardware configured to 1.2 GHz with a CPU core complex bus speed of 400 MHz for maximum processing power. The processor also features an on-chip 32 K instruction and a 32 KB data L1 cache as well as a 512 KB L2 cache that supports a powerful e500 core.

The C925’s large on-board memory consists of up to 1 GB fast DDR2 SDRAM at 400 MHz with ECC protection for exceptional data integrity, 128 MB of user Flash and 64 MB of both boot Flash and user-protected boot Flash for a total of 256 MB of Flash. 512 kB NVRAM with a fast EEPROM shadow memory and auto-storage capability is also provided for application-specific data, allowing easier data recovery in the event of a power outage.

Although in a compact 3U form factor, the SBC includes a wide range of integrated I/O providing two ports each of GbE Ethernet (10/100/1000 BaseT), USB 2.0, CANbus 2.0B and high-speed RS232/422/485 as well as eight single-ended TTL or four RS422/485 differential discrete I/O lines. Each line is independently configured as input with interrupt at any event change level or as output.

An industry standard PMC/XMC slot, which supports up to eight lanes of PCIExpress or four lanes of RapidIO, enables expanded functionality via added mezzanine modules.

In a subsystem, the C925 can function as a system controller, supporting up to five additional cards on the cPCI backplane to provide clock, arbitration and interrupt capabilities, or as a peripheral board.

System support devices include three watchdog timers: one in the processor to provide an internal interrupt at the first timer expiration, then a hardware reset at the second; a second, external timer that resets the entire board at the first expiration; and a third that resides in the NVRAM with a free running counter programmed by the user.

Also in the NVRAM is a real time clock for accurate date and time keeping that can withstand up to two hours of power loss. An elapsed time data recorder tracks the board’s number of events as well as the total cumulative event time since the last reset. Three temperature sensors ensure board integrity throughout the wide -55°C to +85°C operating temperature range.

The standard board support package is for WindRiver VxWorks, with a BSP available for Green Hills INTEGRITY upon request. Each includes all on-board resources to enable the user to take full advantage of the board’s powerful features. The C925 is available in both air and conduction cooled versions.