High performance, OpenVPX 3U VPX-REDI board

The TR 501/36x provides a flexible PCI Express® (PCIe) OpenVPX backplane fabric interface that can be configured for several OpenVPX slot profiles from 8 x1 PCIe ports through to a 1 x8 PCIe port. This fabric flexibility makes the board well suited for both systems with direct wiring between slots on the backplane and for systems linked by a fabric switch card. An air-cooled pin-compatible VPX version is also available for non-rugged applications and bench development. The TR 501/36x 3U VPX REDI SBC is well suited to high performance rugged applications particularly within the defense, aerospace and security markets.



The TR 501/36x board supports the 1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SL9400 processor and offers a large last-level on-die cache (6 Mbytes), 1066 MHz Front Side Bus, Intel® Virtualization Technology, Intel® 64 Technology, and improved power management, plus new features and enhancements to the Intel® Core™ microarchitecture delivering increased instructions per clock. The Intel® Thermal Design Power (TDP) for the 45nm 1.86 GHz dual core processor is 17W giving a much improved performance per Watt when compared to earlier generations of processors. The Intel® GS45 Graphics Memory Controller Hub and Intel® ICH9M-E IO Controller Hub are used to complement the processor to achieve a low power, yet high performance core design. The board is suited for CPU intensive processing applications where the processor’s dual cores can access up to 8 Gbytes of soldered dual channel DDR3-1066 SDRAM, with a peak bandwidth of up to 16 Gbytes/s.



In addition, the TP 501/36x supports, via the P1 connector, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports (or a Gigabit Ethernet plus a 1000 Base-BX port), two USB 2.0 ports, one RS-232/RS-422/RS-485 port and two Serial ATA300 interfaces. An XMC module can be fitted to the onboard XMC site within a single slot. The XMC interface supports a x4 PCI Express link and Pn6 XMC rear I/O to the P2 connector mapped out as P2w1-X24s+X8d+X12d. Also via the P2 connector the board supports analog graphics, up to 2048 x 1536 resolution. For embedded applications an optional onboard 4 Gbytes NAND Flash module is supported. Other features provided are a PC real-time clock, watchdog timer, long duration timer and three GPIO signals.



The VITA 46.0 compliant TR 501/36x air-cooled variant is suitable for non-rugged environments operating over a temperature range of 0˚C to 55˚C. The pin-compatible TR 501/36x RC is designed as a conduction-cooled board (to VITA 48.2) for rugged environments (to VITA 47 Class V3 vibration, Class OS2 shock) and operating over temperatures of -40˚C to +85˚C (to VITA 47 Class CC4) and at altitudes from -1,000 to 50,000 feet (-305 to 15,240 meters). For increased physical protection the TR 501/36x RC supports VPX REDI Type 1 Two Level Maintenance and is a 0.85-inch pitch unit (to VITA 48.2).



The VPX data plane interface is a configurable PCI Express® (PCIe) backplane fabric interface. The backplane fabric interface can be configured as 8 x1 PCIe ports, 2 x4 PCIe ports, 1 x4 and 4 x1 PCIe ports, or a 1 x8 PCIe port. All fabric configurations are compatible with OpenVPX slot profiles. By using one of the latest PCI Express switches the board supports PCI Express Gen 1 and Gen 2 as well as providing a 4 channel DMA engine for fast data block moves. Multiple TR 501/36x RC SBCs can be used on the same backplane (providing multi-processing) as the board also supports an option to set up link 1 in the fabric as a non-transparent bridge. The VPX control plane interface on the TR 501/36x RC can be configured as 2 x 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet ports, or as a 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet port plus a 1000Mbps IEEE802.3z SERDES (1000 Base-BX) port.



System management is provided to monitor board voltages and CPU temperature. This capability is provided via SM0-1 and SM2-3 on the P0 connector, using a System Management Controller and 8 Kbytes of non-volatile memory. Operational self-diagnostics are supported in the form of Built-In Test (BIT) including Power-on BIT (PBIT), Initiated BIT (IBIT) and Continuous BIT (CBIT).



For ease of integration the TR 501/36x VPX SBC and the TR 501/36x RC VPX REDI SBC supports many of today’s leading operating systems, including Linux®, Windows® XP, Windows® XP Embedded, QNX and VxWorks®.



The OpenVPX standard defines the VPX Systems Specification, an architecture that manages and constrains module and backplane designs. The VPX Systems Specification includes the definition of pin-outs and sets interoperability points within VPX, while maintaining full compliance with the existing VPX specification.