First FMC/VPX carrier with optical backplane interface

The first two products to be introduced are the Model 5973 3U VPX FMC carrier with a Virtex-7 FPGA and the Model 3312 multichannel, high speed data converter FMC. Designed for air-cooled, conduction-cooled, and rugged operating environments, these devices combine the high performance of the Virtex-7 with the flexibility of the FMC data converter to create a complete radar and software radio solution. The modules eliminate the integration effort typically required when integrating FMC and carrier. Preconfigured with a suite of built-in functions for data capture, synchronisation, time tagging and formatting, the Model 5973 is optimised for specific FMC modules, such as the Model 3312.

Providing higher levels of I/O performance by incorporating the emerging VITA 66.4 standard for half size MT optical interconnect, the Flexor Model 5973 features 12 optical duplex lanes to the backplane. Additionally, it features a high pin-count VITA 57.1 FMC site, 4 GB of DDR3 SDRAM, PCI Express (Gen. 1, 2 and 3) interface up to x8, optional user-configurable gigabit serial I/O and optional LVDS connections to the FPGA for custom I/O. Featuring four 250MHz 16-bit ADCs and two 800MHz 16-bit DACs, the Flexor Model 3312 has a high pin-count FMC connector which matches the new Virtex-7 FPGA carrier. This boosts performance levels and adds flexibility.

Rodger Hosking, Vice-President, Pentek, commented: “For Pentek, this was a natural evolution of our Virtex-7 XMC modules. This new product line was inspired by many customers asking for FMC implementations of our popular Cobalt and Onyx family. Pentek also becomes the first supplier to offer VITA 66.4 on a VPX FMC carrier.”

With delivery times of 8-10 weeks ARO, the Model 5973 module (with 4GB memory) is priced from $14,995 (USD) and the Model 3312 is priced from $2,495 (USD).