Intel Atom Z530 processor features on OpenVPX 3U VPX-REDI board

The TR A40/30x RC SBC 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 2 x4 PCIe ports. 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 A40/30x RC 3U VPX REDI Intel Atom processor SBC is well suited to low power rugged applications particularly within the defense market.

The 1.6 GHz Intel® Atom™ processor Z530 is manufactured using 45nm technology and provides 512 Kbytes L2 cache. It supports Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology and Intel® Virtualization Technology. The Intel® System Controller Hub US15W is a memory controller (interfacing to 1 or 2 Gbytes DDR2-533 soldered SDRAM), along with an I/O controller hub and graphics controller combined in a single chip package. Intel specify the combined Thermal Design Power of the processor and chipset as less than 5 Watts.

This versatile VPX SBC also supports dual Gigabit Ethernet (or dual 1000 Base-BX) ports, a high speed CANbus controller, two USB 2.0 ports, two RS-232/RS-422/RS-485 ports, two Serial ATA300 interfaces , DVI-D graphics, and Intel® High Definition stereo audio. An XMC module can be fitted to the onboard XMC site within a single slot. The XMC interface supports a x4 PCI Express link along with Pn6 XMC rear I/O to the P2 connector mapped out as P2w7-X8d+X12d. For embedded applications the board supports, as standard, 4 Gbytes of on-board NAND Flash via an EIDE interface. Other features provided are a PC real-time clock, watchdog timer, long duration timer and four GPIO signals.

The VITA 46.0 compliant TR A40/30x is an air-cooled SBC designed for non-rugged environments operating over a temperature range of 0˚C to 55˚C. The pin-compatible TR A40/30x RC is designed as a conduction-cooled SBC (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 A40/30x RC is also a 3U VPX REDI Type 1 Two Level Maintenance SBC fitting into a 0.85-inch slot width (to VITA 48.2). 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).

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, or 1 x4 and 4 x1 PCIe ports. 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 A40/30x 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 A40/30x RC can be configured as 2 x 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet ports or 2 x 1000Mbps IEEE802.3z SERDES (1000 Base-BX) ports. System management is provided to monitor the system fan, board voltages and CPU temperature. This capability is provided via SM0-1 and SM2-3 on the P0 connector, using a Baseboard Management Controller and 8 Kbytes of non-volatile memory.

For ease of integration the TR A40/30x VPX SBC and the TR A40/30x 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.