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1. cp WWW rtecc com Red Rapids e PI www redrapids com Red Rock Technologies Inc www redrocktech com Sensoray B ies sci www sensoray com tees www technobox com Ultimate Solutions Inc DO cadet E www ultsol com VadaTech PETER www vadatech com VersaLogic Corporation 3 P RR www versalogic com RTC Issn 1092 1524 magazine is published monthly at 905 Calle Amanecer Ste 250 San Clemente CA 92673 Periodical postage paid at San Clemente and at additional mailing offices POSTMASTER Send address changes to RTC 905 Calle Amanecer Ste 250 San Clemente CA 92673 66 rimi October 2007 con card the most reliable AdvancedMC connectors A new standard in reliability con card is a new quality seal that identifies connectors possible offset between connector contacts and module pads providing the highest level of mating reliability for by 60 thus significantly increasing the mating reliability of AdvancedMC modules MicroTCA backplanes and AdvancedTCA carrier blades con card connectors feature the unique GuideSpring By preventing module float in the connector con card connec technology The GuideSpring pushe
2. Configuration Store PIO CP Driver An example of a feature rich software stack and some basic features to look for when shopping for an embedded module which are available for feature rich ap plications Figure 1 Each of these options has features that make it better suited for a specific installation As a result it is essential to understand the differences between the available options including standout fea tures trade offs or considerations and ultimately which application or environ ment each of these technologies will per form best in Embedded device gateways typically are configured by an experienced IT pro fessional to collect and archive data from a small number of devices to a central lo cation over an IP network or the Internet They are targeted at applications that need to move commands status and informa tion to and from remote devices Because they are used to collect data from known devices gateways are configured to know how each connected device behaves and utilizes the standard TCP IP protocol for communication Figure 2 Aside from the need for installation and configuration by an experienced pro fessional these gateways are usually af fordable and efficient providing market proven connectivity Gateways in gen eral have become the networking choice for collecting or archiving data that is re ported on a regular basis to a centralized repository such as a Stru
3. i T www domaintec com Embedded Community 59 www embeddedcommunity com ELMA Electronic Inc www elma com Extreme Engineering Solutions Inc 4E METRUM TC www xes inc com GE Fanuc Embedded Systems f www gefanucembedded com Harting Inc Of oss www harting com www ept com IEI T2 www usa ieiworld com Company Page Website Innovative Integration dic eee ee www innovative dsp com alts wer Pct ETT www intel com Interface 5 PRENNE www interfaceconcept com Lakenheath Electronics Design 4T www lakenheathelectronics com McObject LLC eene n www mcobject com MEN Micro INC a ES PN www menmicro com Motorola 2 www motorola com One Stop Systems www onestopsystems com Performance Technologies OD M TCR RUE NA www pt com Phoenix International A www phenxint com PKG Magazine www pkgmagazine com Real Time amp Embedded Computing Conference
4. MicroTCA 2000 Prevalidated Modular Platform 2007 GE Fanuc Embedded Systems Inc All rights reserved Safetyltritical Systems Beyond Reliability Safe Opera tion Cover Photo Courtesy of RobotWorx http INE robots com An Im 1 ue IEEE 1394 Firewire Board PC 104 Plus Format STi TABLEOFLONTEN TS JIUDER 2UU 4 4 cmped eri din 1 Down 0 1 Als Magic Three su ments i tne 2 rketplace Products amp Technology FTOI EN EApeadadi ped ogy used by Industry Leaders TECHNOLOGY IN CONTEXT Configurable Processing Platforms 1 0 FPGAs Deliver for Next Generation Signal Processing Systems Craig Sanderson Nallatech 1 Tools Open FPGAs to Expand into New Domains Rick Kuhlman National Instruments Derek Palmer Xilinx SOLUTIONS ENGINEERING Remote Monitoring and Management Alternatives and Trade Offs for Remote Monitoring and Management of Embedded os Kelly Stone and Woody Hutsell Texas Memory Systems SOFTWARE AND L TOOLS Uritical ovstems Manag ging in nenting Safety n Real Time Systems with Non Volatile Memory lechnology Long Life Motherboard with RAID Digital Subscriptions Available at www rtcgroup com October 2007 ims MISSION CRITICAL data storage modules Extreme Comprehensiveness
5. A 32 bit PCI bus board offers an IEEE 1394 Firewire controller for two channels The MSMW104 from Digital Logic is based on the IEEE 1394 controller chip TSB43A B22 by Texas Instruments and provides a data rate of up to 400 Mbits s across a maximum dis tance of 4 5 meters The MSMWIO44 is equipped with two firewire connectors and thus allows 63 network nodes to be con nected The board has a hot plug interface and supports plug amp play technology Auto recognition and device configuration for which no adjustments to the board are required ensure a robust operation and a high reliability MSMW104 runs under the most common operating sys tems like Windows and Linux Further technical features are its small dimensions of only 90 mm x 96 mm x 15 mm L x W x H and its high MTBF mean time between failure value of more than 100 000 hours The board requires a 5V power supply and operates within a temperature range of 25 to 70 C The typical current consumption is 150 mA The MSMW104 works with all common PC 104 Plus CPU boards The segment length can be extended by using repeaters while the Firewire network can be widened to a maximum of 1 000 segments by employing bridges Another advantage is the 12V supply voltage of the bus Many Firewire devices therefore work without a separate power supply and only require one cable Digital Logic Luterbach Switzerland 41 0 32 681 58 40 www digitallogic ch 48 rim October 200
6. Once the event log has been uploaded from target memory to the host TraceX displays the events graphically on a horizontal axis representing time with the various application threads and system routines to which the events are related listed along the vertical axis TraceX creates a software logic analyzer on the host making system events plainly visible Events are represented by color coded icons located at the point of occurrence along the horizontal timeline to the right of the relevant thread or system routine When an event icon is selected the corresponding information for that event is displayed as well as the information for the two previous and two sub sequent events This provides quick single click access to the most immediate information about the event and its immediately surrounding events The axes may be expanded to show more detail or collapsed to show more events TraceX provides an overview mode display that shows all system events on a single horizontal line to simplify analysis of systems with many threads TraceX is available for use on Windows hosts for all target architectures supported by ThreadX for a license price of 1 000 Express Logic San Diego CA 858 613 6640 www expresslogic com 8641D Dual Core Processors and Serial RapidlO Interconnect for High Bandwidth A new AMC module combines dual core processing flexible I O and a choice of RapidIO or PCI Express connectivity for AdvancedTCA
7. eo An RTC Group Publication Beyond Reliability to S Safe M FPGAs Pile on Power in Configurable Processing Manage Even Small Modules via the Web Solid State Memory Takes on Big Jobs GE Fanuc Embedded Systems MicroTCA minus the surprises Application ready platforms take the time out of time to market The process of getting a hardware platform up and running can be full of nasty little surprises like cooling issues interoperability problems power distribution challenges and even component availability Unless of course you choose a pre validated pre tested and pre integrated MicroTCA platform from GE Fanuc Embedded Systems We spend a lot of time putting the system together for you SO you can spend your time fine tuning your appli cations With one of our systems you can jump right in knowing that all the cards speak to each other and to the MCH that the OS and drivers work that the IPMI functions flawlessly and that you just got a huge jump on your competition To make things go even smoother we have developed one of the biggest selections of AdvancedMC cards on the planet Everything from Cavium Octeon packet processors to Intel Pentium M processors Gigabit Ethernet to OC 12 and VGA to GPS With our pre vali dated systems and AdvancedMC selection the only Surprise you may encounter is just how easy MicroTCA can be www gefanucembedded com microtca
8. All three versions are available with E2 capabilities extended temperature range from 40 to 85 C The Rl version is designed for standard application re quirements in air cooled environments The R2 version is ruggedized for high shock and vibration environments in ac cordance with the VITA 47 EAC6 specification The R3 ver sion is fully conduction cooled and meets VITA 47 s ECC4 requirements These three versions make the Kontron CP6001 a suitable partner for the Kontron CP6923 PICMG2 16 Ether net switch board which Kontron has already deployed as a 1 and will make available for the R2 and R3 rug ged levels Together these 60 CompactPCI boards provide a cost effective alternative for rugged high demand systems in a variety of markets including military and aerospace The Kontron CP6001 features embedded Intel dual core processors With thel 2 GHz Intel Core Duo U2500 ULV processor and the Intel Core 2 Duo L7400 LV processor the Kontron CP6001 has extraordinary performance per watt values Based on the Intel Mobile 945GM chipset with a front side bus of up to 667 MHz and ICH7 R Southbridge the Kontron CP6001 provides high graphics performance for the two independent digital video outputs to the rear I O 2x DVI 1 x DVI and 1x HDMI as well as AC97 audio capa bilities The board provides safety and security via a trusted platform module TPM 1 2 two redundant 8 Mbit firmware hubs fail over and Intellig
9. High reads reads call Block quickly follow writes High writes mostly Big Block sequential High rads mostly sequential Table 1 Matching 1 solutions and data problems Green circles indicate a solution that should be considered as an option for a given storage device and data pattern Yellow circles indicate that a solution might not do so well with a given data pattern but results could vary based on the device tested No circle in a square shows the device is not a good fit for the data pattern tion the battery life for the devices other functions will be much longer Using flash in laptops is the most re cent integration of the technology Flash drive manufacturers have had IDE and Se rial ATA drives out for several years but the recent drop in prices and increases in density are enabling the use of flash in the laptop Large flash manufacturers can see that this segment is likely to grow rapidly and every major player has a credible op tion for this category Unlike thumb drives and portable media devices the hierarchy of feature importance is a little different Low power is the most import characteris tic of flash that the laptop utilizes This is because it will extend the battery life and therefore increase the amount of time in which the product is usable Density of course is still very impor tant The smaller memory footprint with the greater capacity will allow for more information and
10. Second harmonic suppression is 15 dBc typical The CVCO55CW 1600 3200 is suitable for use in applications such as digital radio equipment fixed wireless access satellite communications systems and base stations Pricing will start at 10 39 each in volume For additional pricing details contact Crystek Corporation Crystek Ft Myers FL 239 561 3311 www crystek com Secure USB 2 0 Drives With Hardware Authentication Lock A new line of USB 2 0 flash drives addresses the need for secure data storage through hardware technology rather than software Flash Padlock from Corsair features Auto Locking so the user doesn t need to remember to enable the protective feature It will automatically lock and protect itself after removal from the computer Graphical Bus Analysis and Simulation Tools for Use with 1553 429 USB 2 0 Devices A multi protocol USB 2 0 Interface with newly enhanced graphical bus analysis tools combines with a Windows based integrated gt software package to let users simulate monitor troubleshoot MIL STD 1553 and ARINC 429 data buses simultaneously or independently without the need for time and cost prohibitive custom software coding The BU 65590U from Data Device Corporation DDC is a small lightweight rugged USB 2 0 Interface that pro vides two dual redundant 1553 channels four ARINC 429 receive channels two ARINC 429 transmit channels seven user programmable Digital Dis
11. the file system can easily mark and avoid factory defined bad blocks as well as bad blocks that develop over time The user can also copy entire flash file systems to different flash parts with their own unique sets of bad blocks without any problems the transactions will be adapted to the new flash disk while they are being copied Fast Recovery after Power Failures Transaction file systems build the file system hierarchy on the fly at boot time by processing the list of ordered transactions in the flash device The entire file system hierarchy is constructed in memory The reconstruction operation can be optimized so that only a small subset of the transaction data needs to be read and CRC checked As a result the file system can achieve both high data integrity and fast restart times The QNX embedded transaction file system for instance can recover in tens of mil liseconds compared to the hundreds of milliseconds or longer required by traditional file systems This combination of high integrity and fast restarts offers two key design advantages First it frees the system integra tor from having to implement special hardware or software logic to manage a delayed shutdown procedure Second it al lows for more cost effective flash choices To boot up embed ded systems traditionally have relied on NOR flash which must be large enough to accommodate the size of the applications needed immediately after boot Starting additional ap
12. 8nd 54 pin TSOPIL as well as the 48 pin BGA wiring and comprehensive software configuration diagnostic tools package 1 000 unit pricing for each product is 18 50 Both products are being sampled now and are scheduled for a production ramp in the first calendar quarter of 2008 Seal O modules are suitable for a wide variety of applications including process control data acquisition broadcast automation security and facility management They have an operat ing temperature range from 0 to 70 C and optional extended range from 40 to 85 C Seal O W series module prices start at 589 Simtek Colorado Springs CO Sealevel Systems Liberty SC 864 843 4343 www sealevel com 719 531 9444 www simtek com 62 rimi October 2007 GPS Integration with Gyroscope Makes up Dead Reckoning Reference Design A new reference design will shorten time to market and reduce the risk of GPS integration for applications that require accurate uninterrupted positioning regardless of GPS signal conditions The GPS dead reckoning system from U blox in tegrates a gyroscope sensor from Epson Toyocom a leader in the design and manufacture of crystal based electronic prod ucts into the reference design for the product U blox dead reckoning solution powered by its LEA 4R dead reckoning GPS module is suitable for applications that require continu ous positioning such as vehicle navigation fleet management and toll systems An odomete
13. AMC Load Board is under 300 depending on volume Elma Electronic Fremont CA 510 656 3400 www elma com Image Processing Subsystem Aids Situational Awareness Designed to interface with a wide range of physical sensors a new image processing subsystem is available for both fixed security installations and in vehicle deployment The ADEPT5000 from GE Fanuc Embedded Systems has been developed in response to growing rec ognition of the difficulties posed by information overload in situational awareness where multiple disparate information feeds in which the inter relation ships between sensors are not always obvious are delivered to banks of monitors This creates the possibility of information overload con fusion and suboptimal reaction times on the part of operators who are often fatigued or stressed Key to the performance of the ADEPT5000 system is its data ex traction process which provides user selectable options ADEPT5000 can use scene change detection moving target detection or contrast de tection and this is enhanced by a classification process that is depen dent on operating scenario the sensors employed and system elements Unlike existing situational awareness systems that rely on the operator to detect and classify an event the ADEPT5000 system automatically brings events to the attention of the operator A typical contact notification includes a graphic symbol around the contact a gr
14. We offer the most comprehensive storage product line in the world offering device alternatives for any standard or unique application Solid State Disk Removable Hard Disk Tape Drives Optical Disk PCMCIA Adapter Extreme Performance Our VME products feature extreme speed capacity and ruggedly reliability with 320 MB sec throughput enabled by LVD SCSI technology storage capacity of more than 600 GBs per module and 1 400 000 hour MTBF 3 Extreme Quality Phoenix International is the only manufacturer of VME data storage products that is ISO 9001 2000 Certified eg 91119139227 INTERNATIONAL Phoenix International Systems Inc An ISO 9001 2000 Certified SDVOSB 714 283 4800 800 203 4800 www phenxint com The magazine of record for the embedded computing industry Free Online www rtcmagazine com Spotlighting the Trends and Breakthroughs in the Design Development Technology of Embedded Computers Search Archived Editions along with the Latest News in the Embedded Community www rtcmagazine com An RTC Group Publication Ie October 2007 Publisher PRESIDENT John Reardon johnr rtcgroup com EDITORIAL DIRECTOR ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Warren Andrews warrena rtcgroup com Editorial EDITOR IN CHIEF Tom Williams tomw rtcgroup com MANAGING EDITOR Rebecca Bauer rebeccab rtcgroup com COPY EDITOR Rochelle Cohn Art Production CR
15. as needed but will perhaps not be as universal The pervasive growth of embedded PC compatible small modules can be expected to make the magic three interconnect tech nologies even more common 4 October 2007 Fie 5 jose die d ies AN THE ADVANTAGES ARE CLEAR Motorola is the clear choice for MicroTCA Motorola s cutting edge MicroTCA products can help cut your costs risk and design cycle while increasing your flexibility Whether your applications need specific O flexible packaging ruggedization or a choice of processors we can customize solutions to meet your needs That s why our MicroT CA products are quickly being adopted for network centric applications across telecommunications defense aerospace industrial and medical industries Looking for a clear advantage over the competition HELLOMOTO see why Motorola should be your first choice for MicroTCA solutions at motorola com computing MTCA MOTOROLA and the Stylized M Logo are registered in the US Patent amp Trademark Office MicroTCA and the MicroTCA logo are trademarks of PICMG All other products or service names are the property of their respective owners Motorola Inc 2007 All rights reserved INDUSTRY cup Small Form Factor Trade Group Formed to Address Group Forms to Develop Super Speed USB Interconnect A group of six major industry companies has formed the USB 3 0 Promoter Group to create a US
16. be excellent Large ar rays of flash memory are possible due to the high densities of flash chips and the fact that the chips can be packed densely in their enclosures Additionally because flash does not require power for data per INDUSTRY Insight sistence these large arrays of flash memory use very low power Cached Flash systems designed for the enterprise will also have many redundant layers of data protection to isolate the application from bit errors ob served in the flash memory and even from errors observed in the DDR cache Cached Flash systems are able to of fer performance levels that are not pos sible with single flash hard disk drives because of the massive parallelism pos sible in larger form factors with higher chip counts It is reasonable to expect one of these systems to sustain over 100 000 read operations per second from the flash memory and much higher rates if only the cache is accessed Another feature of large cached flash arrays is the ability to support bandwidths as high as 2 Gbytes s Cached Flash systems will effectively fill the gap between capacity performance and price that enterprise systems have been lacking since the inception of the data center 4 Texas Memory Systems Houston TX 713 266 3200 Iwww TexMemsSys com Interface Concept is a leading designer and manufacturer of embedded products Trust the world wide expert for your embedded critical network application
17. capabilities with less weight and overall size a very appealing quality in today s consumer market Rug gedness is the next most important aspect of flash being integrated into laptops Flash drives can survive g forces that even the best designed hard drive cannot survive making the flash drive a data sav ing device for laptops that can be exposed to unexpected drops Performance is also more important in this use of the technol ogy than the other consumer electronics applications The performance necessary for thumb drives and portable media de vices is only just enough to provide for seamless data transfer and streaming me dia and given flash drives fast reads its speed will rarely if ever be insufficient But use of flash in laptops can decrease the boot time of operating systems as well as increase the fluidity of applications ranging from typical multimedia desktop applications to gaming Data Center Applications Given flash memory s slow write per formance and poor write endurance these systems have not been widely deployed for enterprise level integrations RAM based solid state disks on the other hand have been integrated into many enterprise level applications However they are not as commonly found in the consumer sec tor since their price per gigabyte is rather significant persisting data requires ad ditional battery and backup storage and consumers rarely have a use for such great performance At th
18. considerably easier Method Park Software Erlangen Germany 49 0 9131 9 72 06 281 www methodpark de lly for emb uppor Inte an ALA T factor board is designed edded applica tions requiring a stable revision controlled platform The G7B630 NRM G motherboard from Itox utilizes the Intel Q965 Express chipset with ICH8DO South bridge and has guaran teed availability through December 2011 The LGA775 socket sup ports a wide range of Intel Embedded Archi tecture processors in cluding the Core2 Quad processor the Core2 Duo processor and the Celeron D processor specifica RAID 0 1 5 amp 10 disk configuration support is incor porated into the G7B630 NRM G system BIOS using Intel Matrix Storage Technology These BIOS based configura tion controls allow pre OS RAID creation naming and de letion of disk arrays Full management and status reporting of the RAID array storage devices is performed using Intel Matrix Storage Manager utility software An auxiliary pow ered hardware and firmware solution incorporates Intel Ac tive Management Technology Intel AMT enabling remote monitoring and control of system resources These features make the Itox G7B630 NRM G suitable for data intensive applications such as medical imaging security amp surveil lance interactive kiosks and additional applications requiring higher data security Maximum performance is leveraged with up to 8 G
19. in signal processing systems The latest generations of FPGAs offer ever better processing performance com pared to older devices As the market for FPGAs in DSP systems has grown vendors have also started to add new features to of fer enhanced DSP performance The latest Xilinx Virtex 5 SXT FPGA family is a good example of this and is optimized for DSP and memory intensive applications The SXT family includes dedicated features for DSP applications including new high per formance architecture up to 8 7 Mbits of 550 MHz on chip memory and up to 640 em bedded DSP blocks that can implement a va riety of functions Figure 1 These resources provide higher performance versatility and efficiency with reduced power consumption for signal processing applications DSP systems require I O to support direct connection of A D converters and for interprocessor or system level com munications Most A D converters require general purpose single ended or differential lines and some high end devices are emerging with direct serial connection For system level and interprocessor commu nications support for common device and board level interfaces are required The ma jority of the latest FPGAs can address both of these requirements FPGAs have large quantities of general purpose I O lines to which A D converters can be directly con nected With onboard serial transceivers built in support is also provided for common interfaces suc
20. lo cated in the same room With so many advantages to net working the question of connectivity comes to focus on how and where to connect each device rather than for what reason For some time now the two fun damental types of products available for networking embedded devices have been embedded device gateways and embedded device servers In addition designers are also beginning to realize the value of chipsets which are suitable for use in low cost high volume applica tions and programmable device servers October 2007 18 23 SERIAL DIGITAL I O o zi x x Industry Pack 1 0 Modules If you need a variety of 1 0 functions or have a Slew of signals to process then Acromag Industry Packs are your solution Plug in assorted 1 0 modules on a carrier card and you can replace several boards Or insert multiple IPs of the same type for a single slot solution with tremendous capacity Now that flexibility Acromag offers the widest selection Our Industry Pack modules and carrier cards all come with an unbeatable combination of features performance and value Choose from more than 100 IP modules e Carriers for 3U 6U VME CompactPCI PCI Software drivers for RTOS and Windows Flexibility means options And Acromag has more embedded 1 0 options than anyone For flexible capable and reliable 1 0 solutions think Acromag THE LEADER IN INDUSTRIAL I O WWW a
21. minimizing system thermal management requirements The new devices provide PC embedded and consumer system architects with a set of five solutions for the connectivity needs unique to their designs The family is PCIe specifica tion 1 1 compliant and features devices with two to four downstream x1 connections to enable I O connectivity of key endpoints that have migrated from PCI to PCIe and the ability to select upstream connectivity from x1 x2 or x4 to match system throughput requirements Each device is designed for high performance with a low latency cut through architecture deep buffering and support for large maximum payload sizes to afford designers performance headroom to adapt to rapidly changing market requirements characteristic of consumer ap plications Each member of the IDT PCIe family has a dedicated evaluation and development kit for device testing and analysis and system emula tion Each kit consists of a hardware evaluation board with representative upstream and down stream connectivity and an IDT developed GUI based software environment that enables the designer to tune system and device con figurations to meet system requirements All of the new devices are currently sampling IDT San Jose CA 408 284 8200 www IDT com HOW WELL DO YOU KNOW THE INDUSTRY WWW ENBEDDEDCOMMUNITY COM Feel like your EE friends get all the attention Feel there s RESPE for
22. monitors on the Alaskan and Siberian pipelines called for systems that could handle temperature extremes Many new applications are no less demanding from controllers for huge earth movers to remote security sensors to the controller aboard Intel s custom made chopper And finally many suppliers of small form factor boards are now finding themselves on military aerospace platforms The military once the exclusive domain of custom hardware or costly conduction cooled VME is aggressively seeking more compact and less expensive hardware often with Intel architecture proces sors Many of the small platforms shown at ESC fit that profile 64 rimi October 2007 Alive Well Small And while we re seeing a host of small single board com puters and tiny I O modules interconnected via everything from standard buses to PCI Express to USB there were the beginnings of some more highly integrated subsystems More and more cus tomers for rugged equipment are looking for packaged and tested subsystems more on that in future installments Congratulations Congratulations are in order for the management and employ ees of WinSystems The company announced its adaptation of an Employee Stock Ownership Plan ESOP whereby the employees become stockholders In an environment rife with mergers and acquisitions the ESOP is becoming an interesting alternative Jerry Winfield president of WinSystems says acquisitions can be disruptive to both
23. multiprocessor support file systems DO 178 packages etc and so much more rere acl rig uf E zou mu WWW enable the display of Web pages from the connected devices and equipment from which data can be monitored and gath ered Any device with a serial interface can be networked with an embedded de vice server allowing users to preserve their equipment investment and making this technology suitable in a wide variety of environments The device server can be an embed ded module or chip with bundled applica tion firmware that takes serial data from a device s microcontroller and converts it into Web page information using for example Java technology The Web page can then be remotely accessed and moni tored using any standard browser Remote control is achieved by programming the Web server to take messages sent over a browser interface and convert them into device specific commands to affect the behavior of the connected device With device server technology us ers can choose from serial to Ether net serial to Wi Fi or USB to Ether net solutions advanced encryption for maximum security and device servers designed for commercial or heavy duty industrial applications Another ben efit is that some turnkey embedded de vice servers typically do not require the knowledge of an IT professional for de ployment While
24. of net work connectivity alternatives on the market today embedded device designers have solid choices that are highly suited to a full range of applications And the alternatives will continue to grow with future technology that offers the capa bility to enable and manage connectivity from a combination of sources or numer ous servers at a single location rather than having to access dozens of IP addresses This next generation technology promises Flash ee Y ACIJydechnico car all togethe Solid State Rugged Storage UL th PMCs Removable Secure Conduction amp air cooled Solid State Flash amp rotating CPCI 2 16 Flash HDD C Network Attached amp RAID Standard amp Rugged SOLUTIONS Engineering to provide further consolidated access achieving full device intelligence at the edge of the network 4 Lantronix Irvine CA 949 453 3990 www lantronix com 2551616 7 zm VMEbus VXS and VPX Network Attached RAID Flash amp HDD Air and Conduction Cooled for 2798 yir uie rt pieceut or OUP Find out Now yw acttechnico com 215 956 1200 800 445 6194 it October 2007 8 29 PCI Express Gen 2 Switch Family Hitting 5 GigaTransfers per second GT s a new family of Gen 2 PCI Express switches is poised to double the transfer rate w
25. problem on an FPGA Unfortu nately the hardware silo thinks in terms of parallelism and pipelining Hardware engineers must understand the algorithm fully to optimize it in hardware with a se quentially written algorithm They think of the puzzle as little subsections put to gether in a parallel fashion and finally in tegrated as one complete solution The in creasingly rare engineers who are experts in both silos are bridging the difficult gap that is always trying to widen in this em bedded market The second reason FPGA faces the need for abstraction is the growth of the technology into vertical markets where the experts are rarely digital designers Sometimes called domain experts these are engineers and scientists who have a niche idea that requires custom hardware to implement They understand the algo rithms and the IP they need to realize this idea but they do not have the necessary training and resources for navigating the disconnected world of hardware design custom board bring up and electrical design considerations These scientists start companies like SpinX technologies which pioneered virtual laser valve tech nology for micro fluidic applications or OptiMedica which built a laser photoco agulation eye surgery machine that works right in the office Both cases feature highly skilled engineers and scientists in their respective areas but they could not possibly have every skill necessary to create an ent
26. s Channeli zed A A Intelligent c carriers for 8U CPCI CPCle Hybrid System and Clear Channel available EE 002 TMC LE WAN 2 Single dual oe Securit Sita sn gi p PMC and AdvancedMC _ for PMC IPse and S Gigabi jit Ethe ernet ports A E ption le ppe ud dica 961655 y 4 ilDer GIGE interfaces AValla pie N E siteto Escondido 92029 760 745 9883 _ Fax 0 745 9824 2 E product repo boards and accessing 6 terabytes of data from a single P PC at 1 OGigabits per second x SOFTWARE amp Developmenttools Lat Accel Yaw Rate Wheel Speeds Steering Angle Bank Acceleration Compensated LA and YR Surface Estimate Des Yaw Rate strong influence weak influence An automotive electronic stability control system represents a complex real time control loop that must learn over time yet be able to respond quickly and reliably to multiple high speed inputs quire making trade offs so tuning 15 essential to the balance and stability of the system Current automotive Engine Control Units ECUs and ABS systems store tuning and control coefficients in non volatile memory such as a low power SRAM backed up primarily by the vehicle s main storage battery and then supple mented
27. software at www mcobject com C RN E R Se 42 Hello Sprechen Sie talk Its me Martin again with October s edition of Martin s Corner This month have found some interesting links and information that you have to check out hope you enjoy them as much as do Auf wiedersehen for now Is That Bug a Bug or a High Tech Spy When someone says like to be a fly on the wall for that conversa tion they may soon be able to thanks to some new nanotechnology developments The idea behind this development is to implant Micro Electro Mechanical Systems MEMS into an insect during its larva stage of metamorphosis The implanted MEMS would enable the insect to be remotely controlled to transmit conversations or sense certain chemicals Now is that embedded technology or what The following link takes you to an interesting article that highlights some of the applications that this type of technology can be used for http news bbc co uk 2 hi americas 4808342 stm Pentagon Speak Say what The missile is guided by what If you or your company has ever done business with the military or defense contractors you need to check out Pentagon Speak under our Interesting Links section on www corvalent com martinscorner This soundbite highlights just how confusing Pentagon Speak as call it can be It s hilarious and well worth the visit Corvalent is an embedded solutions provider focused on In
28. suited to the harsh temperature environment encountered in automotive ap plications Once data is stored in the nvSRAM it will be secure for up to 100 years at 125 C unlike other non volatile technolo gies where data storage longevity is reduced when subjected to prolonged exposure to high temperatures Lastly the effects of noise whether caused by conducted or radiated emissions can 44 FIRE October 2007 affect ESC systems that use battery backed SRAMs The nvS RAM on the other hand provides significant immunity to high levels of radiation again providing the most secure and robust storage solution available today Laser Photocoagulation Retinal Surgery Ophthalmologists who specialize in the surgical treatment of retinal problems frequently attempt to stop blood leakage by us ing a laser in a process called photocoagulation The laser pulses have an extremely high intensity and short duration heating the blood vessels to encourage platelet coagulation The system must maintain and calibrate the laser output as well as provide real time accurate positioning of the beam The combination of tasks requires a tight control loop where fail safe and reliable opera tion is essential Figure 3 The concern is that the high energy discharges create very high levels of conducted and radiated EMI This may electro magnetically couple into the control subsystems and disrupt the smooth and accurate function of the laser Due to the hig
29. systems that can offer complete reliability and zero maintenance At the same time flash file systems will need to store an even larger amount of critical data from video surveillance streams to encrypted medical data to family photos The market will demand that even the cheapest device support a writeable flash file system that never fails 4 CONCURRENT 3 TECH NOLOG ES QNX Software Systems http www gocct com Ottawa Ontario Email info gocct com Alliance 613 591 0931 Tel 781 933 5900 Affiliate www qnx com All Trademarks acknowledged Sept07 US rimi October 2007 3A PLATFORM SHOWCASE Featuring the latest in FPGA Platform technology IndustryPack IP Cyclonell PHI PIO 24 Ch differential 4 TY P ot RS 485 with programmable ECHNOLOGY CORPORATION termination resistor or 48 LVTTL JTAG and Serial PROM configurable module gt The most complete line of ultra fast flexible and affordable FPGA I O Our solutions are fully user configurable and perfect for Serial RapidIO design and prototyping gt Your solution is offered in wide range of products for IndustryPacks modules PMC PCI and PCIe with configurations featuring Xilinx Virtex Spartan Altera Cyclone II 10 K series and more Alphi Technology Corporation Phone 480 838 2428 E mail sales alphitech com Fax 480 838 4477 Web www alphitech com D A3P MRAM FPGA 1 OMAIN Development Module with
30. their projects The NI Embedded Systems Laboratory uses NI technologies to provide embedded system design experi ential research opportunities for upper division undergraduate and graduate students All students in the UC Berke ley EECS department which re cently was ranked No 2 in the nation in U S News amp World Re port s undergraduate and gradu ate college rankings will work in the lab using NI products In ad dition to combining undergradu ate and graduate courses this lab brings together members of the UC Berkeley community in cluding student and postdoctoral researchers and faculty from a variety of departments The new lab offers a rich and open environment that students can use to explore all aspects of embedded systems design from core concepts such as models of computation concurrency and tool supported design method SENSORAY Embedded Electronics used here Control water levels Measure temperature Monitor density Capture high resolution images in real time Capture video via Ethernet Analyze motion On screen display of text and graphics SENSORAY designs and manufactures OEM electronics for video imaging data acquisition and machine control Our products include Frame Grabbers Video Servers Industrial I O via Ethernet and A D D A boards If you can t find what you re looking for we provide custom solutions S F N SO RAY embedded electronics FREE 30 day evaluations FREE 2 year war
31. this definitely is an at tractive feature for users it also means that the configuration of a device server must be as straightforward as possible to achieve widespread adoption Security Internet protocols and de ployment software become more impor tant with the use of device servers Unlike gateways that are relegated to be used with known devices device servers rely on each device to take responsibility for ne gotiating its own handshake protocols thus requiring a certain degree of process ing ability at the edge For example authentication or a form of encryption may be necessary at the de vice server whereas the gateway requires only a connection to a given device While gateway connectivity is generally limited to serial to Ethernet connections the embedded device server expands on this foundation and offers serial to Wi Fi con nectivity Some of these differences may indicate the preferred embedded network ing product for a specific installation but SOLUTIONS Engineering further considerations should be made as more products emerge Some embedded device servers also take advantage of the ease of program ming a flash memory chip to provide a programmable device server coprocessor This trend brings about yet another option for connectivity the value added chipset Value Added Chipsets As integrated circuit manufacturing processes are improved and refined chips are being integrated into sma
32. ular communications platforms ATCA cPCI and legacy business assets The deal had RadiSys paying some 25 million in addi tion to 6 75 million of inventory and other considerations When integrated into its operations RadiSys expects the transaction to contribute at least 50 million in on going revenue per year NEWS VIEWS amp COMMENT Warren Andrews Associate Publisher RadiSys Corp As of 9 24 2007 There is more than one interpretation of the deal Some in the industry comment that Intel helped bring modular platforms to a level where they could sustain themselves and continue to use Intel processors and chipsets On the other hand detractors of ATCA and cPCI say that Intel sees no future in the technology and is simply bailing out of an approach it tried to develop and after several years failed The truth is probably somewhere in between For RadiSys the deal adds some significant modular products to RadiSys product family including cPCI and expands its market However Wall Street doesn t necessarily agree about the quality of the deal Above is a 6 month chart of RadiSys stock price The Intel deal did little if anything to drive it into more positive space Stay tuned as next month we ll talk about how we believe some of the public companies in our space have completely taken their eye off the ball 4 October 2007 8 65 Advertiser Index Get Connected with technology and companies providing solutions now
33. 245 2860 www advanet co jp 46 rimi October 2007 1141 Ringwood Ct Suite 170 San Jose CA95131 USA TEL 408 432 8000 www advanettech com sales advanettech com ing a checkbook which ensures that the bank s records and the customer s records are in sync This concept also applies to a multitude of robotic coordinated tasks For example in a contour profile which is a description of the movement of the robotic arm a piecewise linear path is constructed of the arm s tool point Inverse kinematics trans lates the tool path into angle and velocity changes for each axis for smooth coordinated motion The smaller the contour inter val the better results are obtained for a better approximation of the exact curve At the end of the profile interval each axis should be at the desired location However coordinated control requires a position check to ensure that each axis has completed the operation and is close enough to the ending coordinate to be within acceptable limits The end result is a faster control loop that provides smooth curve fit quality and the highest through put Having a transaction logging process capable of high speed operation is therefore imperative The above is a simple example of coordinated axes control with robust transaction logging However there are far more complex processes involving conveyors multiple robots handlers and upstream feed information that also re
34. 3D Graphics Performance with Analog Video Capture and Display Two new modules provide high performance 2D 3D graphics video capture and display capabili ties for embedded visual computing applications deployed in both extended and extreme environ ments The additions to the Sentiris 4110 PCI mez zanine card family from Quantum3D are the Models CD13 conduction cooled and CV10 convection cooled The new Sentiris models employ NVIDIA Quadro Mobile GPU technology which ensures binary software compatibility with currently available models The new models support Microsoft Windows OpenGL 1 2 and DirectX 8 0 on Intel IA32 platforms and OpenGL 1 2 under Linux and popular Real Time Operating Systems RTOS including WindRiver VxWorks on both IA32 and PowerPC platforms Compliant with IEEE 1386 1 MIL STD 810F and MIL STD 461E the new Sentiris models are designed to operate in extended shock vibration and temperature environments The conduction cooled conformally coated Model CD13 is also compliant with ANSI VITA 20 and is designed for deployment in extreme operating environments The Sentiris family is compatible with VME VPX CompactPCI PC 104 and other form factor embedded single board computers equipped with either 33 MHz or 66 MHz PMC slots 3 3 or 5V Designed to provide the most requested formats and features including multiple dis play output support the new Sentiris models support dual independent analog RGB up to 2048 x 153
35. 410 858 4650 www iveia com b a s m am m M NEP Design Center for Touch Sensing Apps Based on PIC Microcontrollers Touch sensing is fast becoming an alternative to traditional push button user interfaces because it requires no mechanical movement and enables a completely sealed and modern looking design panding beyond the consumer market touch sensing is begin ning to take hold in medical industrial and automotive appli cations for reasons such as aes thetics maintenance cost and cleanliness A free kit is avail able for download now from Microchip Technology s Micro chip Touch Sensing Design Center at www microchip com mtouch and provides full access to the source code so designers can customize the algorithms and easily integrate them into their main application Called mTouch the kit will provide engineers with a free and easy method for adding a touch sensing user interface to applications utilizing PIC microcontrollers The Touch Sensing Software Development Kit comes with a user s manual with Quick Start Guide for building a touch sensing application along with application notes covering hardware and software design practices with example implementations for touch sensing solutions It includes graphical user interface software tools for analysis of de signs utilizing Microchip s PICkit serial analyzer development tool and source code for a variety of sensing routines In addition it o
36. 6 resolution and digital LVDS up to 1600 x 1200 resolution outputs which enables integrators to reduce hardware footprints and costs while still meeting important performance and functionality requirements Sentiris also supports concurrent analog video output in popular formats including NTSC PAL RS 170 A and S Video Sentiris also sup ports analog video capture in composite and S Video formats which may be mapped to any output either directly into the frame buffer or via video texturing Ten packs of the Sentiris 4110 PMC Models CV10 and CD13 are priced at 24 000 and 38 400 respectively Quantum3D San Jose CA 408 361 9999 www quantum3d com SENSORAY 10 Streaming Video Server Offers High Definition Inputs A rack mounted streaming video server accepts either standard or high definition NTSC or PAL video inputs with synchronized audio With the 2446 from Sensoray the video is scaled to D1 for MPEG compression and transmitted using the RTP or UDP protocol The encoded video is playable by commercial set top boxes such as the Amino or on PCs running free open source software like VideoLan The video into the 2446 can be encoded transmitted and displayed by a remote network decoder in less than a second The 2446 has a highly customizable on screen display OSD or video overlay which can display eight separate regions of graphics and or text A total of 64k pixels is available An API is available to pla
37. 7 Controllers Designed for LCDs Used in Harsh Environments A pair of controllers has been introduced to aid manufacturers building hardened LCD display systems for military and industrial applications The HE 1400 and HE 1600 Se ries from Digital View feature wide tolerance power supplies 12 VDC 25 locking con nectors and low mass tantalum capacitors for maximum tolerance to shock and vibration Mil Spec silicon resin conformal coatings laboratory certified operating temperature ranges of 40 to 80 C and calculated MTBF in excess of 150K hours HE 1600 and 200K hours HE 1400 Both are RoHS compliant The HE 1400 Series is a small footprint 4 2 3 6 highly integrated controller with DVI and ARGB inputs It supports both LVDS and TTL panels and is capable of supporting 4 3 format panels at up to SXGA resolution and 6 9 panels at up to WXGA resolution The HE 1600 Series is a fully buffered multi sync interface controller providing di rect analog and digital connection to a wide range of TFT panels up to UXGA resolution Its flexible port architecture provides inputs for DVI dual VGA channels Composite Video S Video and Component Video across both 4 3 and 16 9 format panels The HE 1600 supports Digital View s proprietary serial port protocol enabling all controller functions and parameters to be controlled via a built in RS 232 serial port A subset of Digital View s serial port protocol is avail
38. B interconnect that can deliver 10 times the speed of today s USB 2 0 connection Since that connect speed is currently 480 Mbits s this would mean a speed of ap proximately 4 8 Gbits s which is within hailing distance of Gen2 PCI Express with 5 Gbits s The six companies are Intel Hewlett Packard Microsoft NEC NXP Semiconductors and Texas Instru ments The group is targeting the design initially for fast Emerging Technologies go transfer applications in the PC and consumer market but in evitably an interconnect with such speed compatibility and econo mies of scale will find its way into the embedded arena Its utility for media however is undeniable During a session at the recent Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco the favorite ex ample was the ability to download a 27 Gbyte high definition movie in about 70 seconds as opposed to the 14 to 15 minutes it takes with USB 2 0 USN 3 0 will be back ward compatible with the previ ous USB technologies and their plug and play capabilities but will move from their technique of de 7 vice polling to a technique that lets a device remain idle until traffic appears for it on the USB network In addition there are a number of improvements planned in the new specification to reduce power con sumption A completed USN 3 0 specification is expected by the first half of 2008 with first imple mentations in the form of discrete silicon Pr
39. EATIVE DIRECTOR Jason Van Dorn jasonv rtcgroup com ART DIRECTOR Kirsten Wyatt kirstenw rtcgroup com GRAPHIC DESIGNER Christopher Saucier chriss rtcgroup com DIRECTOR OF WEB DEVELOPMENT Marke Hallowell markeh rtcgroup com WEB DEVELOPER Brian Hubbell brianh rtcgroup com Advertising Web Advertising WESTERN REGIONAL ADVERTISING MANAGER Stacy Gandre stacyg rtcgroup com 949 226 2024 WESTERN REGIONAL ADVERTISING MANAGER Lauren Hintze laurenh rtcgroup com 949 226 2014 EASTERN REGIONAL ADVERTISING MANAGER Nancy Vanderslice nancyv rtcgroup com 978 443 2402 INSIDE SALES MANAGER Carrie Bowers carrieb rtcgroup com 949 226 2029 Billing Maggie McAuley maggiem rtcgroup com 949 226 2024 To Contact RTC magazine HOME OFFICE The RTC Group 905 Calle Amanecer Suite 250 San Clemente CA 92673 Phone 949 226 2000 Fax 949 226 2050 www rtcgroup com EASTERN SALES OFFICE The RTC Group 96 Dudley Road Sudbury MA 01776 Phone 978 443 2402 Fax 978 443 4844 Editorial Office Warren Andrews Editorial Director Associate Publisher 39 Southport Cove Bonita FL 34134 Phone 239 992 4537 Fax 239 992 2396 Tom Williams Editor in Chief 245 M Mt Hermon Rd PMB F Scotts Valley CA 95066 Phone 831 335 1509 Fax 408 904 7214 Published by The RTC Group Copyright 2007 The RTC Group Printed in the United States All rights reserved All related graphics are trademarks of The RTC Group All ot
40. ECHNOLOGIES wc on board programmer gt Re programmable Actel ProASIC3 A3P250 or A3P1000 flash based FPGA gt 512 Kbytes 35ns non volatile MRAM gt Integrated USB interface for programming debugging and data I O gt 4 user LEDs 2 user push button switches size 2 4 x1 gt Up to 40 user I O pins 34 with adjustable I O levels 3 3 1 5V gt USB or external power Can source 250 mA 5V to external circuitry Domain Technologies Phone 972 578 1121 E mail info domaintec com Fax 972 578 1086 Web www domaintec com High Density 48 Channels PH vd D Converter IP ECHNOLOGY CORPORATIO TECHNOLOGY CORPORATION gt Mix of up to 48 single ended or 24 differential Channels gt On board voltage reference gt Fault and Over voltage Protected 40V 55V multiplexer gt 1 MSPS 16 bit A D Converter gt Software programmable single ended or differential input with gain for each channel gt Input ranges 10V 5V 2 5V 1 25V using Software programmable gain amplifier gt Acquisition time lt 2s gt 64Kx16 Data dual ported SRAM gt Flash EEPROM Alphi Technology Corporation Phone 480 838 2428 sales alphitech com Fax 480 838 4477 Web www alphitech com BA Red Rapids Channel Accelerator XCVR 16 bit 130 MSPS 4 gt Dual 16 bit 130 MSPS A D converters gt Dual 16 bit 130 MSPS D A converters gt Xilinx Virtex 4 LX or SX
41. FPGA gt Optional 32 Mbytes of QDR SRAM gt Includes reference design with source code gt Prices start at 5 840 LX40 11 no memory Red Rapids Phone 972 671 9570 E mail sales redrapids com Fax 972 671 9572 Web www redrapids com an M 4 1 DEVELOPMENT TOOLS SAFETY CRITICAL SYSTEMS Tecnnology Implementing Safety in Real Time Systems with Non Volatile Memory As more and more real time applications involve human contact many have the potential to cause physical injury even death to those involved with their operation The use of non volatile semiconductor memory technology can greatly reduce or even eliminate accidents by Rich Paulson Simtek lution by designing safety features into a wide range of vehicles Simple solutions such as seat belts and crumple zones which lead to more sophisticated systems like anti lock brakes and airbag systems opened the door to safety as a ma jor selling feature in the automotive industry One of the newer safety features electronic stability control ESC addresses a major cause of serious automobile accidents rollovers caused by over correcting drivers Mandated by law for use by 2012 ESC is a complex yet practical real time embedded approach to mitigating the ef fects of a driver often in a state of panic subjecting the vehicle to extreme and often violent steering and braking maneuvers Operationally ESC
42. Get Connected is a new resource for further exploration into products technologies and companies Whether your goal is to research the latest a datasheet from a company speak directly with an Application Engineer or jump to a company s technical page the goal of Get Connected is to put you in touch with the right resource Whichever level of service you require for whatever type of technology Get Connected will help you connect with the companies and products you are searching for www rtcmagazine com getconnected Company Page Website Dietro O www acromag com M www acttechnico com ADLINK Technology America Inc www adlinktechnology com Advanet Technologies 8D icis copesscctoiiad www advanettech com Alphi Technology Corporation 72 T HR www alphitech com PROLLY c ese o www aptyc com pl so E www ces ch COMPUTED dincitestsotsctciecttesdarseebiczacs cr TOES cmcomputer com Concurrent Technologies Plc em www gocct com See eee ere errr corvalent com Curtiss Wright Controls Embedded Computing www cwcembedded com Data Device Corporation a i CREER www ddc web com Domain Technologies
43. Logic Luterbach Switzerland 41 0 32 681 58 40 www digitallogic ch EE AMC Load Board for Test amp Debug of MicroTCA Systems A new Advanced Mezzanine Card AMC board is designed for testing the cooling and power of MicroTCA systems The AMC Load Board from Elec tronic is compliant to the MicroTCA 0 and 0 Advanced Mezzanine Card specifications The unit comes standard in the single module full size with options for double modules and compact or mid sizes Hot swap plug gable the board incorpo rates a JTAG interface and IPMI support The load board is configurable to seven wattages OW 20W 30W 40W 50W 60W and 70W Six LEDs on the front panel indicate which power level is activated Custom watt ages and access management is available upon request The power level can be changed by repeatedly pressing the front panel button cycling through all power levels Also the power is controlled using IPMI commands that allow each level to be controlled independently The blink mode is also supported to set a dynamic load The load board has three temperature sensors one on the bottom and two on the top These are implemented as IPMI temperature sensors and could be read through the MicroTCA Carrier Hub MCH The unit also features redundant opera tion with automatic switchover Elma also offers a new AMC Extender Card and has a full line of MicroTCA backplanes enclosures and components Pricing for the
44. ZigBee ensuring a reliable solution in noisy envi ronments Features such as energy detection clear channel assessment and channel selection help the device pick the best possible channel thus avoiding other wireless networks such as Wi Fi The PCM ZigBee requires only 5 volts to operate and it is RoHS compliant It is also available with an optional Trimble GPS receiver installed for mobile applications The board operates from 40 to 85 C Pricing is 149 for the PCM ZigBee G 1 using the XBee transceiver and 179 for the X Bee Pro configuration WinSystems Arlington TX 817 274 7553 www winsystems com n9 S 1 64 Bit SBC Incorporates CoreT2 Duo for High Performance Graphics A new 64 bit Compact PCI board based on the Intel CoreT2 Duo Processor T7500 combined with the Mobile Intel 965GM Ex press Chipset is targeted at a variety of industrial applications such as monitoring visualization or control computers as well as ap plications in test and measurement Its specially developed heat sink and soldered components protect against shock and vibra tion The T7500 CoreT2 Duo processor runs at a frequency of 2 2 GHz Intel CoreT2 Duo Processors L7500 or U7500 also available The F18 from MEN Micro provides a 667 800 MHz front side bus and high performance graphics which accelerate digital image processing such as CAD tools 2D 3D modeling video and rendering applications as well as scient
45. Zz memory s drastically dropping Get Connected with companies mentioned in this article www rtcmagazine com getconnected 32 FIRE October 2007 Example of a 1 2 Terabyte Flash RAID system with 16 32 Gbytes of DDR cache The system has a bandwidth of 2 Gbytes s with 100 000 sustained reads from flash per second ogy due to its inherent non volatility rug gedness low power consumption and rap idly dropping price This technology has been around since the late 1980s but was first brought to market in the early 1990s by Toshiba Many of these factors make it a prime candidate to be a successful technol ogy in the consumer market since it can be integrated into many existing technologies as an alternative for hard disk There are downsides to flash mem ory its writes are extremely slow com ing in slower than hard disks in some cases and it has limited write endurance meaning that the chips will render them selves unusable in a matter of 10 000 to 100 000 writes depending on the type of flash chip used Multi layer chip MLC technology is specified to perform 10 000 writes before wearing out while single layer chip SLC technology is rated at up to 100 000 writes Random Access Memory or RAM is a more mature technology than flash and can process both reads and writes at 10 15 nanoseconds although it is inherently volatile and therefore requires a power source in order for it to operate and retain infor
46. a company s customers and employees Having been on both sides of the fence as a former director of SBS Technologies witnessed some of these disruptions Both engineering talent and product focus tend to get dissipated in such acquisitions WinSystems Winfield seems to agree saying Too often we see that when a company is acquired by another firm within a year their products disappear as they are integrated together with other product lines Vice President Bob Burckle says that he is pleased that the employees can continue to provide the products and services that customers of the company have become accustomed to and that customers won t experience the dislocation of having the com pany acquired or merged And the owners can feel comfortable that their employees will be able to continue to work in the same environment they have for the past 25 years Small Form Factor Trade Group Last issue we commented that the PC 104 consortium may be failing to deliver its constituents the type of leadership they need to compete in the balance of this decade Well when the industry sees a vacuum it doesn t take long for someone to step in and try and fill it The formation of the Small Form Factor Special Interest Group SFF SIG was announced last month at ESC with the goal of developing adopting and promoting cir cuit board specifications and related technologies that will help electronics equipment manufacturers and
47. able for the HE 1400 Series A wide range of accessories is available including audio amplifier inverter interface board OSD button board OSD membrane kits and IR remote control Thou sand unit pricing is 110 for the HE 1400 and 180 for the HE 1600 Digital View Morgan Hill CA 408 782 7773 www digitalview com Tool Provides Graphical View of Real Time System Events ee oe A host based development tool enables embedded developers to visualize and better understand the behavior of their real time systems With TraceX from Express Logic developers can see the occurrence of system events like interrupts and context switches that occur out of view of standard debugging tools i Designed to work with Express Logic s ThreadX RTOS TraceX collects a database of system and application events on the target system during run time These events include thread context switches preemptions suspensions terminations and system interrupts all of which generally escape detection in a standard debugging environment Trace information is stored in a circular buffer on the target system with buffer size determined by the application That information may be uploaded to the host for analysis at any time either post mortem or on encountering a breakpoint A circular buffer enables the most recent N events to be stored at all times and to be available for inspection on system malfunction or another significant event
48. ale MPCGS4 E COP v Frees scale MPC 755 Freesc ale MPC 7801 Freescal e MPCS21 E i 0 ES Freescale MPC823 m DE IPC8240 8241 Freescale 8245 Freescale 924 DC824 tar uu Cur EL P uu Free escale gt Freescale MPC om D Freescale MPCS8265 Freescale MPC8266 Freescale MPC8270 Freescale MPC Frees As x ya Freescale MPC Freescale C8 50 Freescale MPC8 Frees scale MPCS Freescale MPCS854 Frees cale fh APC BEE Freesc cale MPC855 15 Freescale MPC85650 Freescale 8 APC mes Contact Ultimate Solutions today at Toll Free 866 455 3383 info ultsol com www ultsol com the types of devices and equipment that employ them It can be cumbersome to provide a cost effective solution that is flexible enough to address the protocols size and deployment options of the de vices that it will connect When evaluating the software and firmware that accompanies an embed ded device gateway or server there are several categories of features to con sider from the top level down to the most minute details application application support security network drivers and kernel These will vary among products since there is no single standard of re quirements for embedded device network installation Figure 3 The expense of developing a solu tion tailored to any one installation can be quite substantial even if Linux is the plat form of choice I
49. and a 48 bit output that can be expanded to 96 bits The devices also include 8 to 16 RocketlO GTP Low Power Transceivers capable of operation in the 100 Mbit s to 3 75 Gbit s range These devices support over 40 1 0 standards with 360 to 640 Maximum Select 1 0 pins Figure 1 given application sequentially Only one arithmetic function e g a multiply can be completed at one instant in time meaning that external memory accesses for the stor age of sub products present an additional overhead Newer multicore processors and specialized processors such as the CellBE have multiple ALUs and can therefore do multiple calculations simultaneously How ever these still rely on a relatively small number of ALUS running very fast and storing sub products in external memory FPGAs are different When used in a processing context FPGAs can be con sidered to be custom processors Designs with tens or hundreds of ALUS can be implemented with distributed high speed internal memory available for sub product storage This means that multiple arithme tic functions can be implemented simulta neously resulting in highly efficient ap plication implementations Performance depends on the application being imple mented but is generally in the range of ten to a hundred times faster than a processor on a single device basis FPGAs are there fore ideally suited to the implementation TECHNOLOGY nContext of complex DSP algorithms required
50. and MicroTCA platforms The MPC 102 from Mercury Computer Sys tems is based on the dual core Freescale 8641D at up to 1 3 GHz with Mbyte of L2 cache per core and integrated on chip I O subsystem with RapidIO is provided in a flexible AMC form factor supporting 10 Gbit s raw I O bandwidth through the Rapi dIO interface The dual core 86410 doubles the per formance of Mercu ry s previous AMCs built on Power Architecture processors A SATA interface supports a HDD in the neighboring AMC bay The architecture and AltiVec vector processing units of the e600 core are compatible with Mercury s industry leading Scientific Algorithm Library supporting use of the MPC 102 in dense floating point process ing applications such as radar sonar and image inspection The MPC 102 8641D AMC expands the Mercury Ensemble family of AdvancedTCA and MicroTCA platforms to support high density con trol plane applications The Ensemble AdvancedTCA and MicroIT CA platform is specifically designed around the Serial RapidIO embedded system interconnect Mercury Computer Systems Chelmsford MA 978 967 1401 www mc com PCI Express Based 2 0 20 Gbit s InfiniBand and 10 Gigabit Ethernet Adapters A pair of high performance 20 Gbit s InfiniBand and 10 Gigabit Eth ernet adapters are accelerated by PCI Express 2 0 with 5 GT s support PCIe Gen2 doubling the bandwidth to host processors The dual port ConnectX IB and Con
51. anguage uses a software wire to create a hardware connection Intuitively representing parallelism and data flow is a key high level feature that makes this type of abstraction uniquely suited for FPGA development With tools like this FPGA technology can achieve the objective of reaching new market spaces and domain expert devel opers By using graphical system design to design prototype and deploy their ap plications SpinX and OptiMedica were able to use LabView graphical program ming and COTS hardware to dramati cally simplify development resulting in complex laser control with an FPGA solution Presumably any engineers Or scientists can represent the projects they want to accomplish with diagrams Historically the market forces them to convert that diagram to sequential text based code With graphical languages the code is a diagram It is exciting to see FPGA technology getting better cheaper and faster to de sign With its massive growth and distinct benefits new engineers and new markets are evaluating FPGA possibilities As mentioned tools and vendors are begin ning to catch up with and identify the bottlenecks causing growing pains in the technology One example of a collabora tive effort to bring FPGA to new scientists and engineers is the partnership between National Instruments and Xilinx to pro vide a hardware and software platform based on FPGAs They have worked to gether to create a number of commer
52. aphic symbol flashed to the operator indicating the di rection in which the contact should be visually followed an audible alarm the current image of the contact in a picture in picture window and a recorded image of the contact displayed in a supplementary win dow ADEPT5000 is designed to interface with any video sensor in cluding thermal imagers Currently available with analog video CCIR RS170 interfaces in the future the full range of digital video interfaces including Gbit Ethernet will be available GE Fanuc Embedded Systems Charlottesville VA www gefanucembedded com October 2007 Fus 57 Pre Validated Modular MICroTCA Platforms Two scalable MicroTCA platforms are designed to deliver the performance and flex ibility needed for cost sensitive network centric MicroTCA develop ment applications in a variety of markets including telecom commercial and military Each platform from GE Fanuc Embedded Systems has been pre configured and pre tested to en sure that customer development and deployment times are kept to the minimum possible IPMI code is provided to ensure interoperability The MicroTCA MP 2000 platform features a 21 13 slot MicroTCA chassis while the MicroI CA MP 3000 features 80 15 slot MicroTCA chassis Both platforms come pre configured with a Power Module dual Cooling Units and MicrofCA Carrier Hub with PCI Express fabric module together with GE Fanuc Embe
53. applications Coupled with exceptional support services we have what you need to quickly and cost effectively develop and deploy your system Platforms Blades Software Support Many solutions One vendor High Performance Blades Single and dual core SBCs Ethernet switches intelli gent shelf management voice processors serial and T1 E1 communications I O and RAID storage blades NexusWare Our CGL 3 2 registered and POSIX compliant Linux distribution includes a full operating system development tools protocols HA middleware and P SA Forum compliant APIs Best of all NexusWare s total integration with our blade PEHFORMANCE and platform solutions means you have shorter development cycles TECHNOLOGIES EEE Contact Performance Technologies today and bring us your product development shopping list Phone 585 256 0200 www pt com amp E mail info request pt com TECHNOLOGY InContext 26 E Sere erst onere IT A AES 3 Li _ 14s B v pre TTE The Xilinx XtremeDSP Solutions Starter Platform enables developers to evaluate and implement digital signal processing systems in an FPGA optimized with hard DSP blocks for high performance DSP applications tractive However the software tools of the time were still primarily tailored to hardware engineers VHDL and Verilog had become the predominant design entry method Un
54. are to move processing into the digital domain This means that multiple channels of high bandwidth data must be processed directly sampled from analog front ends Both of these factors mean that there is more data to be processed faster Today FPGAs are the mainstream technology of choice for many new signal processing systems Ten years ago many would have considered FPGAs to be a niche disruptive technology This transition has reshaped the competitive landscape of com mercial off the shelf COTS hardware and software An ecosystem of new companies 10 rims October 2007 offering COTS FPGA processing solutions and professional design services has flour ished Established players with product port folios built around RISC processor technol ogies have evolved their product offerings to include both processors and FPGAs Industry standard form factors and interconnect technologies are the mainstay of the embedded systems world Organiza tions such as VITA and PICMG develop open modular standards for embedded computer systems Equivalent organiza tions exist in the interconnect space de veloping standards for cable and backplane communication Over the past few years the standards landscape has changed dra matically VITA and PICMG have been busy updating existing standards such as VME and cPCI to meet the demands for the embedded market Brand new standards such as VPX and ATCA have been intro duced Products using th
55. become more complex there are more faults to antici pate They can happen in any order in a domino cascade fashion and many can occur simultaneously How can these exceptions be handled as the combinations of fault sources grow exponen tially The answer is transaction logging combined with intel ligent recovery agent software Transaction Logging into Fast nvSRAM A successful coordinated robotic control structure can be enhanced by the use of transaction logging Transaction logging is a two step process First one must record the robotic event that needs to be completed into the log Second when the event is completed the log is reconciled This is much like reconcil iision for a Sustainable company vanet lnc from Japan 9 EXIITESS A6EXP8021 Single Board Computer KEY FEATURES lll Intel Core Duo L2400 1 66 GHz w E7520 server chipset lll Dual ch PC2 3200 Registered DIMM SEC DED or x4 SDDC lll 2x Gigabit Ethernet 2x Serial ATA 4x USB 2 0 Onboard SXGA graphics 1280 x 24 bit lll 6U 2 slot width 0 C to 55 C operating range 4 RoHS compliant 2 A3EXP1563 2ch Gbit Ethernet Board KEY FEATURES inte 82571 adopted as Ethernet Controller Type 2 peripheral board This Board can be used for x1 and x4 lanes 0 Cto 55 C operating range 3U 1 slot width RoHS compliant Please consult us regarding your specific custom requirements TEL 81 86 245 2861 FAX 81 86
56. ble goods building and home automation applications RFID readers sensors and controllers and vend ing machines Growing Alternatives Embedded networking products range in protocols size and cost similar to October 2007 8 27 QUADRATURE COUNTER TIMER SERIAL 1 0 DIGITAL I O o x x S 4 ACROMAG 1 0 SOLUTIONS 4 Reliability gt ompactPCl 1 0 Designed for industrial and military applications Acromag PCI and cPCI 1 0 boards deliver dependable operation in hostile environments COTS grade components provide superior performance and our extended temperature models will withstand 25 to 85 C ranges Now that s reliability Reliability also means long term availability Acromag boards are designed for a life span of at least 10 years Our lifecycle management program ensures that your system designs will be sustainable long into the future Wide variety of long short PCI 3U 6U cPCI High performance and high density Software support for RTOS and Windows For flexible capable and reliable 1 0 solutions think Acromag 4 THE LEADER IN INDUSTRIAL I O WWW acromag com 800 881 0268 or 248 624 1541 Ultimate Solutions Inc Your ONE STOP for Professional Development Tools Embedded Solutions Visit www ultsol com and use our ToolFinder to find the right tools for your next project Please choose a processor Freesc
57. by a secondary capacitor that continues to provide backup power to the memory during battery replacement The potential life and death nature of such a complex and es sential system has many automotive OEMS considering an enhanced version of fast non volatile memory that offers an unlimited number of read and write cycles In addition since most control loops need to be fast in order to meet today s demanding performance require ments OEMs require a non volatile memory capable of writing 40 million 32 bit words per second which is at least 1000 times faster than the fastest control loop time requirements offered by traditional non volatile memory technologies like flash and eclectically eras able programmable read only memory EEPROM The nvSRAM provides such a solution nvSRAM is a mem ory technology that combines high speed SRAM with an equal amount of non volatile EEPROM all on the same chip Figure 2 In the event of a power failure the contents of the SRAM are automatically copied to the on chip EEPROM When power is restored to the system the contents of the EEPROM are copied back to the SRAM returning the system back to the same state as before the disruption of power This ensures that the profile data cannot be lost due to a power failure whether during a momen tary power glitch during normal vehicle operation or through a momentary loss of power that may occur during an accident In addition the nvSRAM is particularly well
58. byte DDR2 800 MHz dual channel memory dual PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controllers and onboard Intel GMA 300 graphics The product is also available without RAID and Intel AMT support under part number G7B630 N G Single unit price for the G7B630 NRM G is 430 and 398 for the G7B630 N G with volume pricing available Itox East Brunswick NJ 732 390 2815 Iwww itox com Ruggedized Ethernet Switches Address Harsh Environments A series of 5 port industrial unmanaged Ethernet switches with M12 connectors now have IP67 rated hous ing and are designed for the toughest industrial applications The rugged IP67 rated design of the EDS 305 M12 switches makes them suitable for use in harsh or outdoor environments such as in the transportation and factory automation industries The EDS 305 MI2 switches are water resistant and are designed to be resistant to the effects of dust dirt humidity vibration and shock The EDS 305 MI2 switches use M12 connectors for the Ethernet interface M12 connectors can ensure a tight connection and keep Eth ernet connections from popping loose in high vibration applications such as in moving vehicles In addition the EDS 305 M12 switches have received important industrial and safety approvals such as UL508 Class 1 Div 2 and will also receive DN V GL maritime certification for specialized applications Two models are available both of which are IP67 rated to be wa terproof One
59. ce and move graphics anywhere on the screen OSD graphics can be edited from a remote Ethernet node and viewed by other observers on the network Four types of video outputs are available locally including an SDI video stream containing the bit map image and text overlays in real time A DVI port is available for display on a local LCD display Composite and S Video outputs are also provided All outputs are generated and scaled from a common input source Drivers are available for Windows or Linux The 2446 is available immediately with pricing starting at 4 231 with quantity discounts available Sensoray Tigard OR 503 684 8005 www sensoray com 50 m October 2007 Ultra Accurate Thermocouple Measurement Instrument A high accuracy temperature measurement instrument comes in a stand alone box offering 48 separate 24 bit resolution inputs each with its own A D converter and CJC as well as a USB or Ethernet port for connecting to a PC Each member of the Temppoint series from Data Translation incorporates 48 dedicated 24 bit A D converters for ultimate resolution and 48 dedicated CJC circuits to guarantee ultra high 0 01 accuracy 1000V Channel to Channel galvanic isola tion is implemented to provide signal protection The units offer automatic linearization of B E J K N R S and T standard thermocouples and can expand to hundreds of channels by adding boxes to the network Additional features include constant thro
60. cial off the shelf COTS FPGA targets with conditioned I O standard bus connectivity and LabView as a graphical programming tool for the FPGA logic LabView known to many as a graphical programming lan guage for PCs and real time systems can also target an FPGA with a block diagram Figure 1 Through the National Instruments and Xilinx collaboration the user creates LabView code in this standard graphical programming environment This graphi cal code is converted and ported to the Xilinx tools for the compilation proce dure rendering a bit file to program the embedded FPGA Figure 2 Most of the details are taken care of through an ab straction layer offering the user a smooth experience for targeting a true hardware device without the knowledge of VHDL or board level design Combined with electronics around the FPGA for analog digital I O clocks and PCI PXI bus communication through DMA or reg ister level the technology is allowed to grow into vertical markets such that sci entists and engineers can utilize the tech nology effectively FPGAs will continue to grow because of their flexibility speed and reconfigu rable nature Because of this the industry is releasing tools to make this technology not only grow in its traditional market space but also outside the bounds of pre vious possibilities bringing FPGA to the domain expert 4 National Instruments Austin TX 800 258 7022 www ni com Xil
61. compares the driver s intended direction in steering and braking inputs to the response to the vehicle via lateral acceleration rotation yaw and individual wheel speeds ESC then automatically sends commands to various subsystems of the vehicle such as braking individual front or rear wheels engaging the ABS system to prevent wheel slip and reducing excess engine power to help correct understeer plowing or oversteer fishtailing D uring the 1960s the automobile industry began a revo Get Connected with companies mentioned in this article c www rtcmagazine com getconnected 42 IME October 2007 Figure 1 shows a block diagram of a typical ESC This system has a highly complex control loop requiring that the fastest DSP possible be used to achieve the shortest possible loop time In addition the system is also adaptive to support a wide range of different vehicle models configurations weight distribution handling and performance and then improving both safety and ride control as an added benefit These learn ing systems must continuously adapt to changing conditions known as adaptive control which requires data to be stored in fast semiconductor memory The adaptive control time constants are much slower than those of the tight fast real time control so coefficients may take days to compute and properly adjust as total system stability must be ensured This implies slow corrections based on a large dataset Over time a p
62. crete I Os an IRIG B time syn chronization input and a 5V output Powered directly from the computer s USB port the BU 65590U eliminates reliance upon a dedicated power source providing a truly portable solu tion suitable for use with virtually any laptop desktop or tablet computer Based on DDC s Enhanced Mini ACE Architec ture the BU 65590U in as cludes high level C API j library software that supports all advanced archi tectural features and driver sup port for Windows 2000 and Windows XP for MIL STD 1553 and ARINC 429 function ality Library functions abstract all register accesses and memory allocation no specific hardware knowledge is necessary Data Device Corporation Bohemia NY 631 567 5600 www ddc web com With its simple touch pad security PIN entry system Flash Padlock can be unlocked by means of a touch pad security PIN entry system for use as a standard USB flash data drive Flash Padlock is impervious to brute force hacks or keystroke loggers that would defeat a software secured USB flash drive The user sets the unique security PIN which can be up to 10 digits long for unlocking the device The unit works on Windows MAC OS and Linux platforms without the use of additional software Flash Padlock is available in two capacities 1 Gbyte and 2 Gbytes priced at 29 99 and 39 99 respectively Corsair Fremont CA 510 657 8747 www corsair com 56 m October 2007 PC 104 P
63. cromag com 800 881 0268 or 248 624 1541 Answer Both Which path would you choose Would you stick to the safer looking well traveled route Or would you choose the more rugged path the one that may very well take you on an adventure What if you could do both With new high performance low power Intel embedded technology you get all of the familiar goodness of the most widely used processing architecture in the world And now we ve added advanced platform technologies that will help you blaze new trails and explore new ground Like hardware enabled virtualization and active management technology that allows for remote control of embedded platforms All without adding more chips or increasing the complexity of your board designs With so much efficiency built right in its almost like going down two roads at the same time And that s an adventure on a whole new level Are you ready for it To learn more go to http developer intel com design info 902 htm Intel and the Intel logo are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries Copyright 2007 Intel Corporation All rights reserved Applications Tunneling aa Web Manager Applications Support Security Network Flash Driver Kernel Tasking Module File System GPIO Manager SMTP EMail eee Auto IP DHCP Watch Dog EEPROM Drivers Memory HEAP Module 3rd Party Customization
64. ctured Query Language SQL database server Embedded device gateways have been designed for high volume product deploy ments where low cost limited functional ity microcontrollers traditionally create a barrier to network enablement Because of this device gateways are rarely used for control purposes or to access remote equipment information in real time In addition device gateways require the development of an IT class GUI graphical user interface and database applications and a hardware infrastruc ture at a centralized location to assist in the collection archiving and display of device data While a device gateway is a valuable solution for some this may not be the solution for those designers who do not have the time or resources to config ure the device Unlike embedded device gateways embedded device servers are intended for monitoring and gathering data from a dis parate range of edge devices and equip ment essentially by enabling more intel ligence at the network edge Embedded device servers as their name suggests October 2007 8 25 a 0 lt lt pA COUNTER TIMER I O SERIAL I O DIGITAL I O ANALOG ACROMAG 1 0 SOLUTIONS 1 0 Modules Looking for higher performance without sacrificing the flexibility of a mezzanine format Acromag PMCs enable faster data transfer rates with all the benefits of a PCI interface Acromag s wide vari
65. dded Systems Telum Intel based processor dual SATA storage modules multi port Gigabit Ethernet I O interface and VGA graphics AMC cards A Carrier Grade Linux CGL operating system and Linux Sup port Package LSP with CGL drivers are pre installed on the platforms Seven single full size payload slots are available in the MicroTCA MP 3000 and four in the MicroTCA MP 2000 for additional AMCs Each slot supports full size or compact AMCs A MicroI CA Carrier Management Controller MCMC using an Intelligent Plat form Management Interface IPMI provides the low level hardware management interface that controls the AMCs PM and CUs MicroICA specified IPMI management networking and clock infrastructure are supplied by the MicroT CA Carrier Hub The power module PM provides power conversion management and distribution Both the MCH and PM provide support for hot insertion and extraction of AMCs Direct serial console access to the embedded manage ment firmware is enabled via a front panel connector on the MCH and PM A convenient Command Line Interface CLI provides easy access and control of the firmware GE Fanuc Embedded Systems Charlottesville VA www gefanucembedded com Debugger Software Adds Advanced Functionality Hitex Development Tools has announced extensions to the HiTOP debugger which is used as IDE and user interface for all Hitex tools The new release HiTOP 5 20 features an extended IDE functionality t
66. der of occurrence Examples of transaction based file systems include ext3 and ReiserFS for disk servers and JEFFS and QNX ETFS for embed ded systems While all of these use transactions they vary sig nificantly in implementation For example some use transactions for only critical file metadata and not for the file contents or user data Some can be tuned for specific hardware such as NAND flash Some optimize transaction processing to reduce file frag mentation And still others boot faster after a power cycle and recover faster from file errors than others Discover Chassis COTS Standards with CM COMPUTER and enter into another world with our new CM ATR 25 35 45 Series Up to 15 enclosure models offering outstanding Performance oversized Power Capacity optimum Heat Management and a wide range of Accessories amp custom Options Decidedly well suited for critical Defense amp Aerospace systems requiring premium quality that can be provided only by leading edge technology Brief Chassis Specification Guide CM ATR 25 CM ATR 35 45 o rac s ser mes s ser wes SEF nes ATR Long 5 Slot 60 VME64x or cPCI 34 ATR Long 7 Slot 60 VME64x or cPCI chasis Vin Board Format Slot by slot user configured card cage allows intermixing conduction cooled IEEE 1101 2 ANSI VITA 30 1 and air cooled IEC 297 IEEE 1101 1 boards Cooling Options FAC Flowth
67. dor to provide the complete system solution X ES provides full component selection operating system support and integration services Extreme Engineering Solutions WWNW xes inc com sales xes inc com 2007 Extreme Engineering Solutions them meet this challenge from a number of different angles It is evident that higher levels of FPGA abstraction must exist to narrow the gap between hardware and software and bring FPGA to new applications C to gate providers are investing heavily in methods to extract parallelism and generate hardware description languages from code written in software Other tools attempt to use a combination of sequential programming and configura tion based approaches to target FPGAs with software like code and user defined hardware optimizations One interest ing approach to FPGA abstraction is graphical programming Working in a 2 D space and drawing logic to form a dataflow diagram is an excellent way to represent an FPGA circuit With this approach engineers and scientists can easily see and implement parallelism a key advantage of FPGA based ap proaches over processors by drawing their code in multiple parallel paths Ad ditionally graphical languages have the advantage of representing the data flow through wires rather than instructions In VHDL connecting two signals with a trace is an instruction that leads to a physical connection data_a lt data b A graphical l
68. dustry Through this transaction Emerson can provide greater ca pabilities to our customers as they adopt advanced new technologies and expand applications for their customers with companies mentioned in this article October 2007 98 7 INDUSTRY QNX Software Systems has announced that it is opening access to the source code of its QNX Neutrino real time operat ing system under a new hybrid software licensing arrangement QNX will make source code for its microkernel based OS avail able for download The first source release includes the code to the QNX Neutrino microkernel the base C library and a variety of board support packages BSPs for popular embedded and computing hardware Not only can developers view the QNX Neutrino source code but they can also improve modify or extend that code for their own purposes or for the QNX com munity at large They can then choose to offer back those changes to QNX Software Systems and the QNX development community or keep their modifications private and proprietary These changes are part of a new hybrid software model created by QNX that sup ports the customer s goal of prof iting from software while fueling the passion for developing it Access to QNX source code is free but commercial deploy ments of QNX Neutrino run time components still require royalties and commercial developers will continue to pay for QNX Momen tics development seats However noncommerc
69. e Using Simulink MATLAB with Xilinx System Generator develop DSP systems in the MATLAB environment then run them directly on hardware All with bit true cvcle true results chat bring the world data and hardware into Simulink MATLAB With our Frame Work Logic and Simulink MATLAB board support packages you can quickly integrate signal processing into the hardware without lengthy complex coding real time s Ar penc www innovative dsp com sales amp innovative dsp com e L CONFIGURABLE PROCESSING PLATFORMS INCONT Tools Open FPGAs to Expand into New Domains As FPGAs have become faster denser and more complex a new generation of graphical development tools has risen to make their power accessible to scientists and engineers to address their projects without detailed knowledge of hardware design by Rick Kuhlman National Instruments and Derek Palmer Xilinx gate arrays FPGAs in a wide range of market segments has grown because of the constant improvement of silicon device technology and features Once rel egated to the simple glue logic domain and designed by hardware engineers FPGAs now can implement entire systems on a chip SoCs designed by engineers and sci entists in a variety of different disciplines Similarly software tools used to develop FPGAs have undergone radical changes which empower these same engineers to innovate FPGA development software has expanded out
70. e a number of different laser units may be located close to each other EMI radiation has the ability to affect a nearby unit The system must be able to recover quickly from any power disruption To accomplish this an RF amplifier detects high power disruptive events and immediately generates a request to backup the memory In 10 ms 1 Mbit of data is safely backed up By storing transaction and state logging into an nvSRAM the processor can immediately reboot and reconfigure the system with its entire system state restored in 2 ms This means that the MPU will be able to recover from disruptive events in 12 ms This methodology maintains the system stack and other es sential variables in nvSRAM records use atomic operations by use of a transaction log to update system state variables and resume points Upon reboot pending state updates are securely held in the non volatile transaction FIFO and subsequently un loaded thereby updating the system state variables These are then restored and the system s code resumes from the last resume point The MPU recovers seamlessly in 12 ms and is completely immune from the highest possible noise Robotic Systems Robotics applications depend heavily upon physical security fences to avoid human contact The first rule of robotics is that no machine may harm a human Most modern robots are simple in principle learning machines and procedure followers However these single robots are now beginn
71. e components tied up with unas sisted batch processing for other goals Price per capacity although dropping for RAM SSD is still more than many companies are willing to spend consider ing the capacity they require for their solu tion So where is the product that has the high performance of RAM SSD and the inexpensive rugged non volatile capaci ties of flash memory Until now there was no such beast that would even be consid ered enterprise grade flash storage How ever storage companies are starting to test flash hard drives in their RAID enclosures and companies that have focused on RAM SSDs are looking for ways to take advan tage of flash memory s benefits while iso lating its weaknesses A new type of system has resulted from this called Cached Flash solid state disk These systems are a blend of large RAM cache up to 64 Gbytes and RAIDed Flash memory Figure 1 The best systems in this category are designed from the ground up to take advan tage of the strengths of the respective tech nologies however it can be expected that many designs will just involve replacing the hard disk drive in a storage array with a flash drive DDR caching is used to isolate the application from the slower write per formance of flash memory while simulta neously protecting the flash memory from small block random writes DDR caching is used more for its write performance as read performance from the flash memory subsystem should
72. e damages many bits during a write opera tion Consequently the file system should perform a CRC on each transaction to quickly detect corrupted data If the CRC IN THE HEAT OF BATTLE WE LL HELP YOU KEEP YOUR COOL Temperature extremes on the battletield can be brutal They play havoc with the thermal limits of today s high performance electronics and make aerospace and defense system integrators fight a two tront challenge maximizing performance while beating the heat We can help We re experts in power management and thermal design From intelligent component selection process to innovative patented board and system cooling technologies we knockout heat so you can take full advantage of today s cutting edge processing power CUHTISS WHIGH T Controls Embedded Computing VPX3 125 SCP DCP 1201 Our new 3U VPX and Single Board Computers utilize ultra low power processors from PA Semi and Intel to maximize performance per watt in weight and space constrained environments www cwcembedded com POWER MANAGEMENT ABOVE amp BEYOND SOFTWARE amp Developmenttools e up to 2 0 GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon processor LV e up to 16 Gbytes DDR2 ECC SDRAM e double width full height for AdvancedTCA MicroTCA 3U 6U CompactPCI e choice of Intel Core Duo processor U Core 2 Duo processor or dual Dual Core Intel Xeon processors e up to 8 Gbyt
73. e enterprise level RAM SSD is mostly used for latency sensitive database applications such as on line transaction processing OLTP batch processing and data warehouse ac October 2007 Fs 33 ADLINK p CompactPCI 6910 Single Dual Core Intel Xeon LV 2 0 GHz 2 MB L2 cache Front Side Bus of 667 MHz e Up to 2 GB DDR2 400 MHz soldered SDRAM with ECC e 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports via PCI Express Hiran 14 COM Express ETXexpress DW400 Intel Core 2 Duo Two x4 PCI Express lanes or one x8 lane with EDMA Two vertical SODIMM horizontal for DDR2 400 FlexATX M 885 Socket M Intel Core 2 Duo Industrial Motherboard Dual Channel DDR2 memory Dual GbE ports via x1 PCI Express 1 3 SBC NuPRO 965 1066 MHz FSB LGA775 Intel Core 2 Duo processor Intel Q965 ICH8 chipset with Dual Channel DDR2 One PCI Express x16 and four PCI Express x1 Link Call us toll free at 866 4 ADLINK or email info adlinktech com E www adlinktech com FAI ystems Alliance Allian Associate celeration These systems are capable of accelerating enterprise application perfor mance up to 25x versus performance from hard disk drive based storage RAM SSDs are physically added to datacenters via rack mounted systems They are capable of dramatically accelerating these applications by considerably lowering the response time of the sto
74. e fast SRAM in high speed processor systems to reduce wait states and optimize performance while also delivering the added benefit of backup protection for critical state information Wireless Monitoring over 802 11 b g Can Expand to 247 Modules Many devices that were impractical or impos sible to monitor with traditional cable solutions can now be monitored with wireless modules Wireless capability is the newest addition to the SeaI O family of data acquisition solutions from Sealevel Systems The W series is completely compatible with industry standards communicating over 802 11b g wireless networks using WEP WPA TKIP and WPA2 AES encryption standards A Seal O W series module can be daisy chained with up to 247 Seal O expansion modules using convenient pass through connectors resulting in a very expansive versatile distributed control and monitoring network connected wirelessly to the host The STKIAECS is available in both the 44 pin thin small outline package II TSO All modules operate from 9 to 30 VDC are powered by terminal block or DC jack and are available with host connection options including Ethernet USB RS 485 and RS 232 PII and 48 pin ball grid array BGA pack They also boast features that have solidified the Seal O product line as the industry leader 48 S The STKI4ECIO is available in the 44 field friendly implementation software or switch addressing removable screw terminals for field
75. ead N in numerous facets of today s busi ness world and consumer market place With innumerable types of devices and equipment waiting to send and receive information over a network or the Inter net the question arises as to how to access and control them Size cost time to market Internet protocols and supporting resources have been factors that influenced the adop tion of embedded device networking Having faced these challenges embed ded products have been designed that achieve comprehensive connectivity for devices and equipment to communicate Employing such technology introduces the task of managing the embedded de vice connections Networking as a Necessity The motivation to network enable a product has spread to the extent that al most any embedded device now includes Get Connected with companies mentioned in this article www rtcmagazine com getconnected 20 FE October 2007 networking capabilities as a fundamen tal design feature anticipating connec tion to the Internet and other devices as sonorous Processing Enterprise clage Ru XMURSS HTTPS SSL mote Management ang Gy SSH Security Uy Re connection and Tray Ethernet TCP IP Serial Tunneling MatchPort AR XPort AR GS XPort Direct XPort Direct Embedded device gateways device servers and programmable device servers offer engineers different feature options for their spec
76. eal for High performance computing or network appliance Intel Core 2 Extreme Core 2 Quad CPU DDR 2 memory 4 Gigabit Network 6x USB 2xGbE 4x RS 232 1x PCI express expansion 7 1 Channel Audio http www ieiworld com emarketing usa ieiworld com 1 866 276 6754 Tel 1 909 595 2819 Fax 1 909 595 2816 12 r October 2007 VXS Front Panel MMX MEX Gigabit Ethernet RS232 MPC8548E PowerPC Processor P M M 2x GTP x4 256MB SDRAM Xilinx Virtex 5 5 95 wn CD CD 2 2 GPIO 80 Lines P4 BP GPIO 28 Lines FPGA GPIO 4 Lines Gigabit Ethernet RS232 Boot Flash 256 SDRA SRIO x4 Switch 2x SRIOx4 ca MEC Gry MEX aoo ti 256MBytes SDRA VME PCI Bridge Xilinx Virtex 5 5 95 133 P4 Mezzanine ee E SRIO x4 2x GTP x4 Xilinx Virtex 5 VME64 FPGA GPIO 2eSST 4 Lines P4 BP GPIO 28 Lines VXS Backplane A high speed radar processing system can be built using a VPX backplane board and two XMC mezzanine cards all based on four instances of the same FPGA with appropriate IP in each at least 12 months and cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars Com mercial solutions such as this are available off the shelf and offer low risk and fa
77. ectors of Ease of Use and Powerful Higher level abstraction is the key to success in both areas The hardware of FPGAs will continue as it must to have more I O in less space more options with less power but it is abstraction of the tools that will put the technology within more engineers grasp More specifically the push for higher levels of abstraction in FPGA programming is predominantly driven by two factors closing the gap be tween algorithm designers and FPGA im plementations and making FPGAs viable for engineers and scientists who would not have considered the technology as an option due to programming and system complexity Perhaps a close third factor is easing the burden on digital designers by abstracting details so they can focus on higher level more complex objectives Although this driver is apparent it helps the current market it does not serve to move FPGAs into new markets A classic issue often plaguing embed ded design is the seemingly disconnected tools and thought processes between the hardware people and the software people The software silo focuses on the algorithm optimizing C code to churn the exact answer every time in a sequential fashion Likening the concept to a puzzle software engineers place each piece one at a time until the puzzle is complete When they are done with a fully optimized solu tion they hand the code and results to the hardware engineers who must reimple ment the
78. ent Platform Management Inter face IPMI support The CP6001 supports Linux Windows XP XP embedded and VxWorks 6 x Kontron Poway CA 858 677 0877 www kontron com LEN C hh Credit Card Sized DSP and Video Processing Module A general purpose signal and video processing module in a very small 2 125 x 3 375 form factor combines a DSP an FPGA and a supervisory general purpose pro cessor on a single board The Titan V 4 from iVeia uses the microBackplane which is a single slot miniature backplane combining power Ethernet USB 2 0 and more The credit card sized module requires no external host It combines two IP cores the iVeia Velocity SoC and iScale DSP core into a Xilinx Virtex 4 FPGA which takes advantage of the on chip hard wired PowerPC cores and the XtremeDSP blocks provided by the Virtex 4 The GigaFlex I O modules developed by iVeia provide the external signal and video I O for the Titan V4 iVeia provides optional backplanes and GigaFlex I O modules to accommodate flexible power and periph eral options Microbackplane and GigaFlex I O interfaces are on the same edge connector The module has three banks of 128 Mbyte DDR2 SDRAM running up to 500 MHz as well as two Ethernet interfaces A Velocity SDK software development kit is also available to simplify soft ware design through the use of libraries for data transfer configuration and management iVeia Annapolis MD
79. er resolution of the A D converters is driven by the need for improved digital representation of the ana log signal Another benefit of higher resolu tion converters is that they function better in the analog realm allowing designers to reduce the board design complexity while maintaining accuracy and performance It is worth looking at a few examples to gauge the impact of these higher sampling rates and resolutions The current highest sampling rate converters operate in the 3 Gsample s range at a resolution of 8 bits This means that the data bandwidth of a sin gle channel is 3 Gbytes s Looking at higher resolution converters 16 bit converters are being designed into many systems Cur rent sampling rates for these converters are around 130 Msamples s with 250 Msample s devices around the corner 16 bits at 250 Msamples s equates to 500 Mbytes s per channel for the digitized data These very high data bandwidths rep resent just a single channel Example card level configurations demonstrate that this problem just keeps on growing when you get to the card level Four channels of 8 bit 3 Gsamples s on a single card gives a front end data bandwidth of 12 Gbytes s The equivalent data bandwidth for 8 chan nels at 16 bit 250 Msamples s would be 6 Gbytes s To put into some context consider that each example is considerably more data than that on a single 4 7 Gbyte DVD every second Now consider how long it takes for a n
80. erating system the IO PMC 722 supports a wide range of single or dual display resolutions and refresh rates for standard and wide screen formats The adaptor supports a range of DFP resolutions up to 1280 x 1024 pixels 16 bit color 60 Hz 24 bit color for lesser resolutions and a range of CRT resolutions up to 1280 x 1024 pixels 24 bit color up to 85 Hz The DFP and CRT can be driven simultaneously with the same image or different image sources The DFP and CRT signal outputs are sourced via a DVI I con nector on the front panel on commercial variants as well as via the PMC s P4 connector to the rear The IO PMC 722 is designed in compliance to the PMC and CMC standards and can be F installed onto PMC sites on appropriate intelligent host boards Operating systems supported UA include Windows XP Windows XP Embedded Windows 2000 Linux and QNX Concurrent Technologies Woburn MA 781 933 5900 www gocct com Wide Range 1600 3200 MHz Voltage Controlled Oscillator A wide range voltage controlled oscillator VCO operates from 1600 MHz to 3200 MHz with a control voltage range of 0 5 V 20V The CVCOS55CW 1600 3200 from Crystek features a typical phase noise of 93 dBc Hz 10 KHz offset and has excellent linearity The VCO is packaged in the industry standard 0 5 in x 0 5 in SMD package Input voltage is 5 0V with a max current consumption of 25 mA Pulling and Pushing are minimized to 8 00 MHz and 4 00 MHz V respectively
81. eries by using a variety of en ergy harvesting technologies A product portfolio from Green peak offers open standard easy to install wireless communica tions devices for sensor applications that can operate without power cabling or a battery The technology is based on the IEEE 802 15 4 wireless network standard and supports the open global standards of the ZigBee Alliance The new wireless communication devices leverage three key technolo gies that enable it to operate in a bat tery free environment without cabling The first is an ultra low power wireless transceiver and sensor interface design with efficient power up and power down modes that dramatically reduce power consumption Second is an energy harvesting interface that enables the modules to utilize power provided by external solar electromagnetic and piezo electric transducers Third is a mesh technology that enables designers to create extended sensor networks without the need for battery powered or cabled routing nodes This mesh technology is also self healing and self form ing making it easy and inexpensive to install www a duis Ns prae Greenpeak is initially offering its technology as a 5 cm Lime module an electronic component that OEMs can in tegrate into their products The module integrates a transmit ter receiver antenna and low power mesh network software on a single device The module also has a transmit power amplifier that delivers four
82. es DDR2 ECC SDRAM e extended temperature operation available rugged versions available choice of Intel Core Duo processor Intel Core 2 Duo processor or dual Dual Core Intel Xeon processors e up to 8 Gbytes DDR2 ECC SDRAM e extended temperature operation available e rugged versions available detects an error the file system can use ECC error correction to recover the data write it to a new block and mark the weak block for erasing Each flash block has a limited number of erase cycles before it will fail In some devices this number can be as low as 100 000 erases To address this problem the file system must implement dynamic wear leveling which spreads erase cycles evenly over the device to increase flash life The difference can be dramatic from usage scenarios of failure within a few days without wear leveling to over 40 years with wear leveling To implement dy namic wear leveling the file system tracks the number of erases on each block and then selects less frequently used blocks first Often flash memory contains a large number of static files that are read but not written These files occupy flash blocks that have no reason to be erased If the majority of the files in flash are static the remaining blocks that contain dynamic data will wear at a dramatically increased rate This is especially problematic for NAND which has a limited number of read cycles per block Thus a well designed file syste
83. ese standards can be used to deliver complex signal process ing systems using commercial products as we will demonstrate with an example Signal Processing System Trends Until relatively recently the initial stages of signal processing systems were performed in the analog domain Process ing digitized analog signals in the digital domain offers a number of important ben efits Digital processing of digitized analog signals offers robust system stability flex ibility in waveform and filter design the ability to develop adaptive processing algo rithms and an effective upgrade path These benefits have driven the trend to move the A D converter closer to the antenna in the signal processing chain and perform more processing in the digital domain Gener ally this means that A D signal converters now input raw digitized data directly into the processing stage of the system The data resolution and sampling fre quencies of such A D converters are in creasing dramatically High resolution con verters sampling in the multi megasample per second Msample s and gigasample per second Gsample s range are now com monplace in many systems The benefit of higher sampling rates is somewhat obvious in that developers are able to sample much higher analog signal frequencies The need to sample these higher analog frequencies is driven by the needs of applications in cluding the latest radar and signal intelli gence systems The high
84. eturned from the Boston edition of the Embedded Systems Conference and saw a lot more activity than the Hines Convention Center has seen with ESC in the past sev eral years There were considerably more board and hardware vendors than in years past and many of the booths were seeing a lot of activity As I perused the offerings there were several trends that stood out With only two exceptions all the board and box prod ucts were smaller than a bread box They ranged from tiny mod ules providing wireless interface or other connectivity to small microcontroller based boards to a host of PC 104 ATX ETX and other miniature motherboard flavors not to mention COM Express see Publisher s Letter in RTC last month Another theme that stood out was that many if not most of the board offerings stressed ruggedness In fact one manufac turer stressed ruggedness in the theme of its booth so strongly that I found difficulty in finding the company s name Good job of hiding your name Ampro But the bottom line is that as em bedded computers become increasingly pervasive many of the boards find themselves in hostile environments And there are probably several reasons for that First of all the small form factor of PC 104 and the host of boards and subsystems in that size range are inherently mechani cally rugged Second many of the application areas that early offerings found themselves in from gas and vending machine controllers to
85. ety of 1 0 modules includes high speed A D high resolution D A high density digital 1 0 and even extended temperature ranges Now that capability New FPGA 1 0 means greater capability Re configurable FPGAs let you design custom 1 0 boards much faster and at a fraction of the cost Download your unique code into the FPGA for unlimited signal processing possibilities Virtex Il FPGA with up to 3 million gates 1MB on chip RAM 9MB on board SRAM e Variety of analog amp digital 1 0 configurations For flexible capable and reliable 1 0 boards think Acromag 4 THE LEADER IN INDUSTRIAL I O WWW acromag com 800 881 0268 or 248 624 1541 Looking for the right Spot CES smoothly delivers some of the most advanced computing platforms for tomorrow Reusable Computing Elements with gt Unique processor FPGA tightly coupled combination Multiple UHS segregated memories User controlled access priorities High speed serial links for direct private memory to memory access gt VME VXS CPCI XMC VITA 48 and custom form factors gt Commercial ruggedized air cooled ruggedized conduction cooled grades Enclosures gt ARINC 600 gt ATR gt CompactPCI gt VME CES Unique Features gt High throughput customer FPGA with the ISLE support package gt 20 years of expertise in real time software packages VxWorks Integrity Linux
86. ew dual core processor desktop computer to open or even just move a file 1000 times smaller that that and the scale of this pro cessing challenge becomes clear Enhanced DSP Performance with FPGAs Handling the bandwidth of data from analog front ends as described above is a huge challenge The focus tends to be on processing such large volumes of data in real time A second less obvious challenge is moving the data getting digitized data onto a processor and interprocessor commu nication of either raw data or results FPGAs are able to handle both the processing and I O requirements of directly coupled ana log front ends For this reason the FPGA is now the de facto choice for most high per formance signal processing systems From a processing perspective the real time processing of high bandwidth digitized signal data can be tremendously challenging Complex DSP algorithms that can include digital filters digital down converters spec trum analyzers and demodulators among others need to be implemented in real time Traditional processors such as RISC or DSP processors have a single ALU that can perform all the calculations for a The Xilinx Virtex 5 SXT devices range in logic density from 35 000 to 95 000 logic cells and have 192 to 640 dedicated DSPASE slices that can deliver 352 GMACs at 550 MHz The DSP48E slice includes a 25x18 bit multiplier a 48 bit second stage for accumulation and arithmetic operations
87. face to the PCIe bus The same FPGA is also used for control and data processing Another very important feature of the ATS9462 is its Stream to Disk capability in which data generated by the two onboard A D converters is streamed across the PCIe bus for storage in PC memory or hard disk Users can thus capture hundreds of gigabytes or even terabytes worth of gapless data These features are supported by the AlazarDSO os cilloscope emulation software from Alazarlech a basic version of which is provided free of charge with purchase Customization can include simple control functions such as extra triggers or trigger enables simple mathematical func tions such as averaging and even complex DSP functions such as FIR filters demodulation and FFT Pricing starts at 4 995 with the stream to disk software priced at 645 Alazartech Montreal Ontario 514 633 0001 www alazartech com Dual Core Xeon Security Platform with Modular I O A IU rackmount high performance plat form is easily modifi able to support a range of security applications including IDS IPS firewall VPN gateway Unified Threat Management UTM anti spam and anti virus Called the PL 01039 from Win En terprises the device s motherboard the MB 09042 is also available for OEM purchase These products support single Intel Dual Core Xeon LV ULV processors with 667 MHz FSB and offer a broad selection of connector cards to meet a
88. ffers the Mplab IDE and user s manual along with a 30 day license for Hi Tech s PICC Lite C compiler and its user s manual Microchip Technology Chandler AZ 480 792 200 www microchip com October 2007 Fus 51 Wireless PC 104 Module Links Industrial Applications A new PC 104 based module supports the IEEE 802 15 4 standard for wireless communications The PCM ZigBee from WinSystems is a PC I04 com pliant module that can be configured with either an XBee or XBee Pro transceiver supplied by Max stream which is wired to an SMA RF connector on the edge of the board The difference between these two configurations is the amount of power consumed 1 mW vs 60 mW and signal range For the XBee Pro configuration the indoor and urban range is up to 300 feet 100m and outdoor line of sight is up to 1 mile 1500m For the XBee the urban range is 100 feet 30m and outdoor range is 300 feet 100m Selection of the antenna type and placement has a major impact on the range The board operates at 2 4 GHz which is in the ISM Industrial Scientific and Medical fre quency band The module complies with Part 15 of the FCC rules and regulations and has been certified for use in several European countries as well The PCM ZigBee uses the PHY and MAC layers defined by IEEE 802 15 4 which is the short distance wireless communication standard for 2 4 GHz band 802 15 4 provides a robust foundation for
89. fortunately the tremendous growth of the FPGA market in the mid 1990s slowed the expansion of FPGAs into broader market applications Instead FPGAs became very focused on expand ing in a few markets such telecom data com networking and communications This did little to create real disruptive in novation in FPGA development tools Fast forward again to the present and a very different FPGA market Technol ogy has driven FPGA speeds to half a gigahertz and increased their size to more than 300 000 logic cells What was once an entire circuit board of parts now fits into a single FPGA Moreover ASSP like features have found their way into FPGAs Entire microprocessor systems PCI Express and multi gigabit transceiver hardware are now available as well At the end of the dot com bubble FPGA compa nies found themselves actively expanding into new markets after the networking and communications markets had been hit hard This expansion also created a need to court engineers without hardware backgrounds Recently there has been a significant growth in FPGA development 16 rims October 2007 tool offerings Tools are now tailored to embedded developers who develop in C language DSP engineers who develop in hardware and other engineers and scien tists who prefer to work with graphical programming tools This focus on development tools is what will push FPGA into even more de signs as they grow along the seemingly orthogonal v
90. h as PCI PCI Express Ether net and Serial RapidIO These interfaces can be used to distribute data between mul tiple FPGAs which allows large algorithms to be split across multiple FPGAs Complex algorithms such as the shared product cal culations used in many radar systems can also be handled using these high bandwidth interprocessor communication fabrics Building Compact Signal Processing System Using FPGAs A DSP based radar processing system built with the goal of capturing and processing a 1 GHz bandwidth may need a sampling rate of 3 Gsamples s with an 8 bit sample Post processing would require multiple FPGAs One approach would be to build a dedicated piece of hardware to implement this system Assuming all of the correct resources were in place this would take October 2007 8 11 TECHNOLOGY InContext Dn IEI Technology Corp ETX form factor single board computer NANO 9452 Socket M Intel Celeron M 1 0GHz CPU Intel 852GM ICH4 chipset DDR2 memory up to 1GB 10 100 Ethernet Dual channel 18 bit LVDS LCD panel 4 x PCI support ISA support 2x IDE 4 x USB 2 x RS 232 Fanless AMD LX 800 Universal Controller AMD LX 800 500MHz AMD LX AMD CS5536 chipset 8 x COM Ethernet 4 x USB Windows CE 6 0 OPC Modbus support library provide by SDK ideal to work with PLC industrial communication converter gateway and factory automation Intel Core 2 Quad Mini ITX KINO 9654G4 Mini ITX Id
91. h repeti tion rate 10 50 Hz of laser pulses the system s microprocessor must recover quickly between firings if disrupted Additionally the DSP controller may also be required to shut down and then quickly restart due to this radiation despite the most rigorous shielding and isolation methods System shutdown and quick reboot between firings while safely maintaining the critical data in non volatile memory is the solution of choice Continuous calibration requires frequent writes to memory due to the changing output of the laser source Frequently a polarizing plate will adjust the laser output by changing its angle Disruption of access to the data between fir ings or the crashing of the processor might risk the laser being inadvertently set to full power with disastrous results A solution is needed to enhance the system s immunity to this high noise environment Since this is a real time system recovery speed is essential as is data integrity DQ DQ 006 007 SOFTWARE amp Developmenttools In nvSRAM each memory cell contains both a fast static RAM and a non volatile element which acts as an on chip EEPROM The SRAM provides fast access and cycle times like a normal SRAM In the event of a voltage drop data transfers automatically to the non volatile storage cells and is automatically restored when power is re established Store and recall operations can also be initiated by
92. hat now allows optimized integration of allimportant compilers such as the new Tasking V X compiler based on the latest Viper C technology As a result us ers can now perform the entire development di rectly from HiTOP without ever having to leave this user interface Another highlight is the new XML based Windows technology Based on this HiTOP pro vides a graphical SFR editor This allows users to easily create their own Windows or customize existing Windows Additionally they can display the microcontroller s special function registers The new version HiTOP 5 20 is available for all ARM and Cortex derivatives as well as for Infi neon C167 XC166 and XC2000 Hitex Development Tools Irvine CA 949 863 0320 www hitex com 58 FING October 2007 Low Power Small Package PCI Express Switches A family of five new PCI Express PCIe switches is optimized to solve system I O con nectivity challenges in PC embedded and consumer applications The devices from IDT range from a 3 lane 3 port switch to an 8 lane 5 port switch The new switches are optimized to address the specific I O connec tivity challenges faced by systems requiring both low lane and low port counts in embed ded medical automotive PC and consumer applications Available in multiple package options for greater flexibility in customer and end user applications the devices are aimed at reducing customers total cost of ownership by
93. he UN performance at speed grades of 15 25 and 45 ability to organize complex system development With globalized software development j j ns while offering reliable and transparent non now a common practice the graphical nature of VisualRTXC can help overcome language EM c volatile backup on any power disruption Other barriers between team members improving communications and simplifying project man S i key features include unlimited read write agement VisualRTXC is fully integrated with Quadros Systems kernel configuration tool durance automatic non volatile STORE RT XCgen so users can scale the kernel and define the necessary kernel objects properties ae power loss and non volatile STORE under and attributes to meet the specific needs of the application Single seat licenses are priced 2 990 Multi j hardware or software control The devices can starting at 2 990 Multi seat licenses are also available perform automatic RECALL to SRAM on Quadros Systems Houston TX 832 351 2830 www quadros com power up and have unlimited RECALL cycles and 200K STORE cycles endurance They use a single 3 3V power supply and can retain non volatile data for 20 years The fast access times and unlimited read write SRAM performance combined with high reliability SONOS non volatile storage makes nvSRAM an attractive solu tion in many applications nvSRAM devices emulate and replac
94. her brand and product names are the property of their holders OCTOBER 2007 Embedded Interconnects Are Winding Down to the Magic Three by Tom Williams Editor in Chief of juggling bottlenecks If processor performance seems too slow the industry comes out with higher speed CPUs Then of course operating systems and applications see the in creased potential and add features which demand more memory Then transferring data becomes a hurdle and we get advances in interconnects These steps are accompanied by tons of white papers market studies and oceans of PowerPoint slides but in exorably the world advances These periods of intense activity innovation and hype are usually interspersed with intervals that can informally be referred to as shake out times That is when a number of competing ap proaches have been put forward engineers marketers users and OEMs evaluate use experiment improve and ultimately adopt or reject them We appear to be in such a period in terms of in terconnects Remember back several years ago when serial switched fab rics hit the scene Initially there were over 100 of them thrown up against the wall Think back now and see if you can name six of them cue the Jeopardy music Well don t feel bad you re only going to need to remember three interconnect technologies for the foreseeable future Ethernet PCI Express and USB The rest are falling by the wayside or crawling into n
95. ial developers aca demic faculty members and quali fied partners will be given access to the QNX development tools and run time products at no charge Customer and community members will also have the abil ity to participate in the QNX development process similar to projects in the open source world Through a transparent develop ment process software designers at QNX will publish development plans post builds and bug fixes and provide moderated support to the development process They will also collaborate with custom ers and QNX community using public forums wikis and source code repositories QNX has also introduced a new community portal Web site called Foundry27 as the new hub for its transparent development initiative At Foundry27 custom ers and developers can access a wealth of resources relating to the QNX Neutrino RTOS and the QNX Momentics IDE as well as to new community projects Upon completing the free registration users then identify which of three different software licenses is ap propriate to their interests and gain immediate access to copies of most QNX software products as well as source code for many of these components National Instruments and the University of California Berke ley College of Engineering are working together to offer electri cal engineering and computer sciences EECS students a new graphical system design environ ment in which to design prototype and deploy
96. iches to eke out a limited existence Ethernet should come as no surprise It has been ubiquitous for many years dominates both wired and wireless LANs and connects us all to the Internet TCP IP now takes us via IPv6 from the Web all the way to individual sensors and actuators Practically every CPU board sold today has at least one Ethernet connection and these are commonly offered as 10 100 or 1000 Mbit s speeds 10 Gigabit Ethernet is now becoming more wide spread and higher speeds are in the future Ethernet connectiv ity enables embedded Web servers to provide remote monitoring and control of devices large and small and in large numbers Eth ernet is here to stay A less obvious but nonetheless solid victory is being achieved by PCI Express PCIe At first it seemed an also ran among such competitors as Star Fabric HyperTransport RapidIO and in computer technology often seem like a game InfiniBand See I named four Its hidden advantage however was backward compatibility with the PC based PCI interconnect and the attendant economies of scale that come with the PC mar ket Gen2 PCIe is about to break into the world with 5 Gbit s speeds per lane and 10 Gbit s Gen 3 will eventually follow It was once a truism to think that PCIe was fine as an inter connect between components and boards inside the box but to go between chassis you needed a different interconnect most prominently InfiniBand Now however that i
97. ie 31 SOLID STATE STORAGE INSIGHT Flash Not Just for Consumers Anymore The convergence of RAM and flash memory into cached flash systems is poised to offer developers the complementary best of both technologies by Kelly Stone and Woody Hutsell Texas Memory Systems price in conjunction with its inherent non volatility makes it a prime candi date for mass storage integration although its write performance and endurance make such an implementation difficult RAM on the other hand is extremely fast in both reads and writes but its cost per capacity has slowed its enterprise adoption These two storage technologies are now being merged together to create Cached Flash systems that leverage the capacity price and non volatility of flash with RAM s un matched speed and performance Solid state disk commonly referred to as SSD uses a volatile RAM or non volatile flash memory as the primary storage media If the systems are built using RAM there will always be battery backup to internal hard disk drives to pre serve data even if external power is lost From the point of view of the operating system SSD systems attach and behave just like hard disk drives It is important to maintain the distinction between RAM and flash memory although both are solid state in nature their capabilities and composition are far from similar Flash memory has been getting a lot of exposure and is a very appealing technol
98. if the op eration can t complete due to a crash or power failure the exist ing data remains intact Upon restart the file system can roll back the write operation and complete it correctly thus healing itself of a condition that would corrupt a conventional file system As Figure 1 illustrates each transaction in a pure transac tion based file system consists of a header and user data The transaction header is placed into the spare bytes of the flash ar ray for example a NAND device with a 2112 byte page could comprise a 64 byte header and 2048 bytes of user data The transaction header identifies the file that the data belongs in and its logical offset and it contains a sequence number to order the transactions The header also includes CRC and ECC fields for bit error detection and correction At system startup the file sys tem scans these transaction headers to quickly reconstitute the file system structure in memory Figure 2 shows how every part of a transaction file system can be built from transactions including Hierarchy entries descriptions of relationships between files directories etc nodes file descriptions name attributes permissions etc Bad block entries lists of bad blocks to be avoided Counts erase and read counts for each block File data the data contents of files 38 rim October 2007 Using transactions for all of these file system entities offers several advantages For instance
99. ific application It s essential to understand what you need part of its intended use Once a device is network enabled with an IP protocol the network is inherently geared for exponen P C T Technobox produces custom and off the shelf PMCs Our extensive range of Serial solutions includes versatile FPGA FPGA based digital I O 3 async I O SATA Ethernet gt Quad IDE controllers Plus as Ethernet gt Adapters Async 5 Reconfigurable a variety of adapters ex tenders and tools for PMC development or integration Make us your first stop for PMC Solutions CardBus Ro 6 www technobox com Digital 1 0 2 CompactFlash PrPMC SAS Your Source for PMCs PMC to PCI Adapters and Tools RS 232 422 485 LVD SE PIM PMC X SANZ Technobox i us Analysis Lumberton NJ 08048 if pum Tel 609 267 8988 a Fax 609 261 1011 i Pea RR Carriers 140 Mount Holly Bypass Unit 1 Extenders 3 MicroBlade J TAG Switch Module Troutdeshoots design detects and 90010585 programming eror Allows soltwore and other tentures f ba upiooded remotely 20 TAG testable load Er FL LE MircoBlade 380 Wati Introducing the Industry s First Full Size GHP Power Module Application Ready 1 U MicroTCA Solution Individually programmable curren
100. ific data processing The F18 is a 32 bit 33 MHz system slot or stand alone board and needs only one slot on the CompactPCI bus In combination with a PCI Express side card the F18 can also be used as a system slot board in CompactPCI Express systems Thanks to a fast soldered 4 Gbyte DDR2 SDRAM a CompactFlash slot and a SATA hard disk slot on the side card the F18 offers abundant memory space for a variety of graphic and data intense applications Standard I O on the front panel of the F18 includes VGA graphics two Gigabit Ethernet ports connected via PCI Express as well as two USB 2 0 interfaces Additional I O is available on different side cards and includes DVI audio additional USB interfaces UART interfaces and Firewire Differ ent watchdogs for monitoring the processor and board temperature as well as rear I O support complete the functionality of the F18 which enters the market with board support packages for Windows Linux and VxWorks Equipped for long life support the F18 has a guaranteed minimum availability of five years Single unit pricing including 4 Gbyte system memory starts at 3 719 MEN Micro Ambler PA 215 542 9575 www menmicro com 52 FING October 2007 PICMG 1 3 System Host Board with Core 2 Duo and Intel Q35 GMCH Chipset Equipped with multicore Intel Core 2 Duo processors up to 3 0 GHz E6850 and combined with advanced remote management features based on Intel s AMT 3 0 technology a new s
101. ing to be combined to work in teams The resulting complexity and systematic coordination brings a whole new challenge to system designers October 2007 Fus 45 The retinal photo shows circular dots created by the laser to induce coagulation The objective of the laser is not to burn but rather to irritate the platelets sufficient to activate the clotting mechanism This photo provides a dramatic representation as to why precise control over the laser s position and energy level is critical Powerful robotic applications can lift objects weighing sev eral tons yet can be scaled with proper software limits to not ex ert more than 3 ounces of force in hand learning mode This is where a human operator physically moves the robotic arms with their hands to mimic the movement of the robot and the system records these movements as a way to teach the robot how to move The danger is when the software malfunctions a glitch occurs or a multi unit failure causes an unanticipated seek to home The result can be and has been fatal Static 3 D Zone models can protect human operators by allowing the software to override motions that may harm them Vision systems can avoid obstacles but the software required is extremely complex and very difficult to detect all possible bugs that may arise A key challenge is to create a safe and robust system despite its being subject to glitches in power and radiated emissions As systems
102. integrators reduce the overall size of their next generation systems The first five members of the SFF SIG are VIA Technolo gies WinSystems Samtec Octagon Systems and Tri M Systems Once the organization gets up to speed it s expected that many others will climb on board Several vendors I spoke with at the conference indicated interest and were waiting to see how it got off the ground The SFF SIG has a litany of things it plans to address in cluding new technologies available to long lifecycle system and device manufacturers which include lower power and highly in tegrated processors chipsets and memory based on 90 nm and 65 nm processes higher density connectors with improvements for ruggedness and high speed serial interfaces such as PCI Ex press Serial ATA SATA and USB 2 0 which replace slower and space consuming parallel interfaces So far The SFF SIG has formed three working groups to address different product categories The SBC Working Group is discussing new small form factor single board computers The Modules Working Group is developing a specification for a new small computer on module COM form factor The Stackables Working Group is examining approaches to embrace new high speed serial technologies into legacy systems in a smooth manner that preserves investments in I O cabling and enclosure designs RadiSys Acquires Intel Modular Comms Platforms RadiSys last month completed the acquisition of Intel s mod
103. inx San Jose CA 408 559 7778 www xilinx com TECHNOLOGY nContext Harsher the Intel Pentium M up to Core 2 Duo SS e For the harshest industrial and mobile applications MEN Micro offers more solutions including m Core 2 Duo T7500 Core 2 Duo T7400 17400 m Core Duo T2500 12400 02500 m Pentium M 760 Celeron M 373 m Side cards UART multimedia USB FireWire CompactPCI Express and more O boards WLAN GPS GSM UARTs Ethernet interfaces switches carrier for M Modules PMC XMC PC 104 PC Card ExpressCard Mini PCI Compatible 3U Intel family with scalable computing performance Long term availability due to easy system adjustment For harsh industrial environments and mobile applications ME men micro nc MEN Micro Inc 24 North Main Street Ambler PA 19002 Tel 215 542 9575 E mail salesemenmicro com www menmicro com October 2007 Fs 19 GINEERING Devices REMOTE MONITORING AND MANAGEMENT Alternatives and Trade Offs for Remote Monitoring and Management of Embedded Monitoring and managing small networked devices presents a number of alternatives depending on whether the idea is to simply monitor or also to control a device over a network as well as the complexity and the expertise required to implement a solution by Rahul Shah Lantronix etworking has become widespr
104. ire product based on FPGA technology Facing time to market and price pressures these scientists believe the more they can do in house and off the shelf the better Bringing FPGA tech nology to the micro fluidic or biomedical application domain is no easy task Never theless these scientists need tools to help Apc Data Device Corporation LEADERSHIP BUILT ON OVER 40 YEARS OF INNOVATION Four decades of quality manufacturing design innovation process control has earned us the time honored trust and confidence of a global network of customers DDC IS YOUR DATA NETWORKING SOLUTION e MIL STD 1553 COTS Boards and Components Fibre Channel Gigabit Ethernet High Speed 1760 e Enhanced Bit Rate 1553 EBR e ARINC 429 Toll Free 1 800 DDC 5757 www ddc web com for all the solutions Bringing P A Semi to PMC Extreme Engineering Solutions introduces the XPedite8000 the highest performance lowest power PrPMC Processor PMC solution available today With the P A Semi PA61 1682 integrated platform processor the XPedite8000 offers Dual 2 0 GHz Power Architecture processor cores Two independent DDR2 SDRAM channels for maximum bandwidth Two front panel Gigabit Ethernet ports e Two PTMC compliant P14 Gigabit Ethernet ports e PMC interface operating at up to 133 MHz e Linux VxWorks and QNX support For customers looking for one ven
105. ith a max current consumption of 25 mA Pulling and Pushing are minimized to 2 0 MHz and 2 0 MHZ V respectively Second harmonic suppression is 10 dBc typical The CVCO55CW 0200 0400 is suitable for use in applications such as digital radio equipment fixed wireless access satellite commu nications systems and base stations Pricing for the CVCO55CW 0200 0400 will start at 10 39 each in volume Crystek Ft Myers FL 239 561 3311 www crystek com October 2007 Fus 55 Dual Display PMC Graphics Adaptor Commercial or Rugged A dual display video graphics PMC based adaptor supports a variety of digital flat panel DFP or analog CRT devices in single or dual display configurations where the DFP and CRT can be driven simultaneously with the same image or different image sources The IO PMC 722 graphic controller from Concurrent Technologies has a rich feature set that includes a complete 3D ren dering suite hardware support for MPEG DVD playback a 2D draw ing engine that supports bit block transfers transparent block transfers color expansion and line draw The IO PMC 722 is designed to add graphics functionality into a single width PMC slot on the host board e g CompactPCI or VME where func tionality power space and cost are key elements Commercial and extended temperature versions are now available and ruggedized conduction cooled or air cooled versions will be available shortly Depending on the op
106. ithin PCIe based systems The new ExpressLane PCIe Gen 2 switches from PLX Technology include the PEX 8648 48 lanes 12 ports PEX 8632 32 lanes 12 ports PEX 8624 24 lanes 6 ports PEX 8616 16 lanes 4 ports and PEX 8612 12 lanes 3 ports These Gen 2 switches share a PLX architecture with features including low latency low power high performance integrated non transparent ports and hot plug controllers small Flip Chip packaging and highly flexible port configurations up to xl6 all elements that feed the requirements of next genera tion graphics backplanes server storage HBA NIC and embed ded markets PLX s PCIe Gen 2 switches are fully compliant with the PCI SIG PCIe base specification 2 0 which doubles the inter connect bit rate over its predecessor to 5 GT s from 2 5 5 and are backward compatible with Gen 1 allowing ease of migration with existing designs Integrated non transparency enables PCIe use in multi host host failover redundant systems and intelli gent I O modules Power reduction methods and proprietary cut through design engineering are achieved through the company s signature features of PLX s third generation PCIe architecture A new technical white paper discussing the important role of low latency components in designing high performance PCIe systems can be found on the PLX Web site PLX switches complement 5 GT s speed with patent pend ing features such as read pacing dual cast and dyna
107. ive Footprint Packing 416 Gbytes of solid state storage in a 2 5 inch hard drive package the E Disk Altima ATA 133 from Bitmicro features the company s EDSA flash I O controller and LUNETA memory flash interface ASICs E Disk Altima SSD is aimed at bringing high capacity and high performance yet cost effective solid state stor age to servers storage networks as well as to other stor age applications that are subjected to extreme operating conditions The E2A133BL ATA 133 model is the first product to be released to market in the E Disk Altima series of flash memory based SSDs designed for military industrial and commercial users who are looking for faster and bigger storage upgrades for time tested PATA based systems This 2 5 inch ATA ATAPI 7 PATA solid state drive supporting PIO 0 4 DMA 0 2 and UDMA 0 6 data trans fer modes will utilize the latest high density single level cell SLC NAND flash memory chips to deliver an astounding storage capacity of up to 416 Gbytes while providing 133 Mbyte s burst with up to 100 Mbyte s sustained Reads and Writes and up to 20 000 Ran dom IOPS With operating temperatures ranging from 40 to 85 C the E Disk Altima ATA 133 model is suitable for 24x7 deployment even in extremely hostile environments Bitmicro Fremont CA 510 743 3155 www bitmicro com 1 F m Mr FC IEEE 1394 Firewire Board in PC 104 Plus Format
108. ller footprints and are thus suitable for use in even the most compact applications At the same time it has become common to integrate many features and interfaces directly in the chip This increase in space efficiency provides impressive processor system on chip SoC capabilities For example an x86 based processor can reside on a chip that is less than a quarter square inch and still have room to integrate serial ports SRAM and Ethernet 10 100 MAC PHY in the same package A new category of chipsets deploy ment ready networking SoCs offer a variety of value added functions and fea tures including minimal requirements for coding a definite plus for applications where time to market is of the essence By definition these SoCs include feature rich firmware including a serial to Eth ernet application intuitive browser inter faces for remote information retrieval and control multiple parameter driven packet configuration options and simplified con figuration A typical coprocessor design uses external flash to load the manufac turer provided firmware A coprocessor offloads and optimizes network activities permitting a less expensive and less pow erful host microcontroller to function at maximum efficiency and thereby lower ing costs Chipset technology is best suited for high volume cost sensitive applications including consumer electronics energy and metering applications point of sale products white dura
109. lopment of more abstract libraries has continued since LabView graphical programming targets Xilinx FPGAs on off the shelf hardware Fast forward five years to when FPGAs had grown to a few thousand logic cells making them capable of imple menting complex systems not just glue logic Silicon technology had advanced to 1 8 microns performance had more than quadrupled and costs had dropped dramatically Driving cost down drove up the adoption of FPGAs by a much broader consumer base At the same time ASIC costs were growing NRE costs EDA tool costs and growing labor costs started to drive ASIC design starts down making the cost of ownership of FPGAs very at w Advanced Managed Platforme v Intelligent Shelf Management lw 3 2 Regictered POSIX Compliant Linux v Single g Dual Core SECs Ob S CHO AT t API One Stop Shopping Bring Us Your List Everything you need for your CompactPCl Applications Performance Technologies CompactPCl products and solutions are the industry s most capable and complete open standards offerings for telecom aerospace and defense and commercial applications We create innovative and robust solutions that enable you to get your products to market faster Our integrated solutions include Advanced Managed Platforms These flexible scalable platforms are ideal for a wide range of compute intensive
110. lus Interface Board with Eight Serial Ports A highly integrated interface board with eight serial PCI ports and a multiplexed 32 bit address data bus of fers a range of configuration options With the PC 104 Plus compatible board Microspace MSMX104 from Digital Logic each port can be configured individually for TTL RS 232 or RS 485 signals and supports high data transfer rates up to 250 Kbits s The board is based on the 16C550 compatible PCI Bus UART EXAR XRI17C158 V with eight channels a 64 byte transmit and receive FIFO and automatic RTS CTS DTR DSR and Xon Xoff software flow control It is well suited as a solution for sensor and data acquisition applications in industrial environments With the MSMX104 Interface type transfer rate parity data and stop bits can be selected and set individu ally for each port Thus the board can be adapted to the needs of the different applications In addition the board sup ports the full duplex RS 485 mode A further feature is the individual disable function which allows the user to disable unused ports to further reduce the power consumption Because of its compatibility with serial PC standard interfaces the board works with common communication software and operating systems like Windows and Linux Its typical current consumption is 250 mA The board is also available for the extended temperature range of 40 to 85 C and resists shock up to 10g and vibrations from 5 Hz to 2000 Hz Digtal
111. m will provide static wear leveling which forces underworked static blocks into service by copying their data to an overworked block This technique gives overworked blocks a rest since they now con tain static data and moves underworked static blocks into the pool of dynamic blocks Minimizing File Fragmentation File fragmentation is an issue in flash devices But support ing defragmentation is only part of the solution Because NAND flash has a limited number of writes the file system must actively prevent fragmentation as much as possible to prolong the life of the flash part Log based or journaling file systems often suffer from frag mentation since each update or write to an existing file creates a new transaction To minimize the fragmentation caused by many small transactions a file system can use write buffering to consolidate small writes into larger write transactions The file system can also monitor the fragmentation level of each file and perform a background defragment operation on files that have become badly fragmented This background activity should al ways be preemptible by user activity to ensure immediate access to the file being defragmented It is possible to build a flash file system that meets the needs of today s safety critical devices providing high reli ability fast recovery times long flash life and high through put In the future NAND flash will be embedded in more and more products requiring file
112. mation on the chip RAM has made quite a footprint in the mass storage arena as well given its equal write and read per formance and its capability of executing a seemingly unlimited number of transac tions An overview of the usefulness of different storage technologies for various data patterns is given in Table 1 Consumer Applications Flash is very attractive to the consumer market Overall the most appealing as pects of this technology are its ruggedness density low power consumption price per solution and performance respectively The most prevalent applications for flash are cameras portable media and thumb drives Recently both portable media devices and laptops have started integrating this non volatile technology as well but more for the purpose of hard disk replacement Thumb drives also known as pen drives USB drives and flash drives are es sentially small portable flash memory de vices that connect to computers via a USB drive and can store information without a power source as well as quickly and eas ily enable sharing of information between computers Ruggedness is the most impor tant feature of this technology since it needs to survive everyday wear and tear activities such as being dropped or accidentally being put through the washing machine and still maintain its data integrity Density is important for this technol ogy as well since although this device is small it is rather inconvenien
113. mechanical engineers T Then you re ready for P im find at mentio n of your mec Manica requir PF medicated answering Sic tior Specife requirements Surrounding your mechanical needs m G NU Go to www pkgmagazine com and subscribe now Don t miss an issue PKG is FREE to qualified engineers managers and project leaders Join nearly 20 000 mechanical engineers who read PKG for the latest in mechanical design An RTC Group Publication Process Management Tool Also Checks Standards Compliance A Web based management system for development processes provides numerous new features in the areas of process conformity and cross company collaboration Version 4 0 of the process tool project kit from Method Park Software allows customers to immediately guarantee the company wide conformance of their systems engineering processes with the prescribed standards For standards such as SPICE CMMI or common safety standards the project kit verifies full coherence of everything from the standards to processes and concrete project documents The user interface which has undergone functional and optical enhancement renders the process controlled handling of project documents even quicker and easier From Version 4 0 a Single Sign On can be used to integrate the project kit into various company portals such as the SAP NetWeaver Portal for example This makes cross project and cross com pany collaboration
114. mic credit allocation to improve system performance A typical application of dual cast is Fibre Channel host bus adapter HBA storage Whereas the PLX switch uses dual cast to simultaneously store data on two RAID controllers the same card can be used for non redundant applications Traffic pacing allows a larger block of data read from disk to memory and vice versa providing greater throughput in data backup and large block transfers PLX designed its Gen 2 switches in the smallest footprint Flip Chip packaging to provide superior signal integrity and designed them with advantageous ball placement Additional PLX features in clude an on chip logic analyzer the ability to do error injection and built in performance monitors which are all valuable in vali dating Gen 2 at the systems level 30 rimi October 2007 P Volume quantity pricing ranges from 25 for the lower 12 lane count PEX 8612 to 75 for the higher 48 lane count PEX 8648 The five new switches will be progressively sampling dur ing the fourth quarter of 2007 with full production in Q108 AII PLX PCIe products are supported with a Rapid Development Kit RDK family of hardware and software tools to accelerate de sign cycles PLX Technology Sunnyvale CA 408 774 9060 www plxtech com Battery Free Wireless Communication Technology for Sense and Control Applications Ultra low power wireless sense and control networks can now be implemented without batt
115. model has an operating temperature range of 0 to 60 C and the other model has an extended operating temperature range of 40 to 75 C With its small size and rugged IP67 housing users can save more space and reduce costs since the EDS 305 M12 switches can be installed directly onsite without the need to provide an additional protective casing Moxa Technologies Brea CA 714 528 6777 www Moxa com October 2007 Kew 61 21 10 0 Non Volatile Fast SRAM Family Visual Design Tool Targets RTXC RTOS Hits 4 Megabits Two 4 Mbit non volatile memory devices in the Simtek family of 130 nm CMOS SO NOS nvSRAM ICs delivers 40 percent bet ter access times four to eight times higher densities and increased system performance over their predecessors This enables them to leapfrog alternative non volatile memory tech nologies in traditional markets while offering new benefits for emerging solid state drives SSDs hard disk drives and other new system memory archi tectures that re 15 ns Fast SRAM quire the speed of 100 Non Volatile SRAM density of __ DRAM non TEEI Addressing the realities of shorter design cycles for systems of ever increasing complexity Quadros Systems has announced the new design tool for its RTXC real time operating system Called the VisualRTXC visual design environment the tool works to dramatically reduce development time for embedded systems VisualRTXC offers an in
116. n OEM s specific I O requirements The standard PL 01039 features two Ethernet modules with eight GigE ports Win offers LAN modules with four to eight ports of copper fiber or mixed media The PL 01039 supports 4 GigE Intel 82571EB PCI E x 4 and 4 GigE Intel 82573L PCI E x 1 The eight GigE SFP or Copper ports with optional bypass function on four ports are easily accessible from the front panel Easy front panel access is also provided for a USB 2 0 port a RS 232 serial port LCM and a 4 button keypad A 32 bit PCI connector and Mini PCI socket are also featured The PL 01039 is available in two enclosed platforms and in the MB 09042 motherboard version Prices in OEM quantities are PL A1039 1U rackmount Intel Dual Core Xeon network appliance eight Copper four ports with bypass function LCM 897 PL B1039 1U rackmount Intel Dual Core Xeon network appliance four Copper four SFP with bypass function LCM 948 and MB 09042 SBC with Intel Dual Core Xeon 8 GigE 333 Win Enterprises North Andover MA 978 688 2000 www win ent com 200 400 MHz VCO Targets Digital Equipment A new voltage controlled os cillator VCO features a typical phase noise of 105 dBc Hz 10 KHz offset and has excellent linear ity and operates from 200 MHz to 400 MHz with a control voltage of OV to 5V The model CVCO55CW 0200 0400 from Crystek is packaged in the industry stan dard 0 5 in x 0 5 in SMD package Input voltage is 5 0V w
117. ne 6 x 300 Mbit s SATA II 2 via back plane and RAID 1 5 and 10 functionality 3 x 10 100 1000 base T Ethernet 1 via backplane 12 x USB 2 0 4 via backplane one parallel and two serial interfaces 16550 UART compatible and 7 14 2 channel HD Audio Codecs including digi tal input and output An optional onboard rugged USB Intel Z U130 flash module with a capacity of up to 8 Gbytes and a MTBF of 5 million hours makes it possible to build up maintenance free systems without rotating non volatile memory Kontron Poway CA 858 677 0877 www kontron com NOLOGY COMING m MEAT YOU rtecc com Real Time amp Embedded computing conference FEATRURED PRODUCTS Quad port Dual port Gigabit Ethernet Ethernet copper copper PCI PCI adapter adapter 105 remaining 115 remaining 199 299 Make An Offer Make An Offer NEWEST PRODUCTS d 19 8U 1U 1024X768 Rackmount Monitor 20 5 Deep aRGB VGA DVI D 15 TFT LCD S Video CVS 1280x1024 2 remaining 1 remaining 1299 Make An Offer Make An Offer Dual PCI SCSI Ultra 3 LVD host adapter 65 remaining Dual PCI X SCSI Gigabit Ethernet Ultra 3 LVD copper PCI host adapter adapter 65 remaining 60 remaining 249 149 Make An Offer Make An Offer Single port Make An Offer 17 8U 1600X1200 SRU 1RU Keyboard Rackmount 20 1 Panel Shelf with Cherry Monitor M
118. nectX EN adapters from Mellanox are designed to optimize the total performance of multicore systems deployed in virtualized data centers and high performance environments I O consolidation of multiple Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre Channel adapters onto a single 20 Gbit s InfiniBand or 10 Gigabit Ethernet adapter especially in bladed servers and storage platforms is a value proposition of ConnectX adapters CETT ay Enterprise vertical applications such as customer relationship manage ment database financial services insurance services retail virtualization and Web services are demanding the leading I O performance offered by ConnectX adapters to optimize data center productivity High performance applications such as bioscience and drug research data mining digital ren dering electronic design automation fluid dynamics and weather analysis are ideal for ConnectX adapters as they require the highest throughput to support the I O requirements of multiple processes that each require access to large datasets to compute and storage results Dual port ConnectX IB and ConnectX EN IC single chip devices and adapter cards supporting the PCI Express 2 0 x8 interface backward compatible to PCI Express 1 1 are available today Adapter cards are available with all popu lar copper IB and and fiber media interfaces IOGBase SR LR LRM Mellanox Santa Clara CA 408 970 3400 www mellanox com October 2007 18 49 2D
119. needs PREMIUM e Single Board Computers e Storage graphics networking COMETH Switching routing amp security Our expertise at your disposal e From COTS to Customisation e Subsystem integration e Product Life Cycle Management e 20 year experience e Layer 2 4 flow management LINES Open communication platforms October 2007 8 35 4 gt ul gt A A SAFETY CRITICAL SYSTEMS Managing Flash Memory in Safety Critical Devices For safety critical devices flash reliability fast recovery times and extended flash life are key concerns A transaction based flash file system can address these requirements without sacrificing fast read and write performance by Randy Martin QNX Software Systems one thought possible a few years ago In many cases they need flash chips that can survive years of constant use even when handling massive numbers of file reads and writes The problem is many embedded systems must operate in hostile envi ronments where power can fluctuate or fail unexpectedly Such events can easily corrupt data stored on flash memory resulting in loss of service revenue or human safety As a further compli cation most embedded designs must keep costs to a minimum The bill of materials often has little room for hardware that can reliably manage power fluctuations and uncontrolled shutdowns Consequently the file s
120. nnel processing can be extended to channels across multiple cards The latest generations of commercial hardware featuring multiple A D convert ers with scalable FPGA based processing systems permit the design and fielding of compact systems to handle both the in creased data load and processing require ments of today s complex sensor process ing systems Front end processing using FPGAs tightly coupled to multiple A D converter channels can dramatically reduce the amount of data that must be transmitted across a system Complex real time pro cessing applications such as radar SDR and signal characterization can be processed within the FPGA fabric at close proxim ity to the sensor resulting in a significant simplification of system architecture while improving overall performance 4 Nallatech Eldersberg MD 410 552 3352 Iwww nallatech com ing Cards X3 Modules Ailiny 5panan DSP 14M elnstruments User customizable turnkey embedded instrumentation Awsortinent of ultimarc performance AMC modules in rugged enclosures wy ultra fast Cabled PC le or Gigabit Ethernet carriers AXihinx Vinex FPGA Distributed Data Acquisition j AMB GDR SRAM 3 wo 2MB SRAMSs 48 bir DIO Co locau cInsurumcent and optimized signal qualitvy minimized cabling 8 Rocker Private Links Limitless expansion via multiple node
121. ocedure can alter critical data and eliminate the ability to recover quickly causing a laser to irreparably burn a patient s retina The lack of a non volatile transaction log means that an inadvertent return to home com mand can kill a human operator Using non volatile memory can significantly improve the safety of a wide range of real time sys tems and the nvSRAM should be seriously considered due to its many positive attributes 4 Simtek Colorado Springs CO 719 531 9444 www simtek com Mass Storage Modules RED ROCK for VMEbus CompactPCI See the full line of Mass Storage Products at or call Toll Free 800 808 7837 Red Rock Technologies Inc 480 483 3777 ASLAKENHEATH m ELECTRONICS um ESDESIGN HE Versatile Embedded System Enclosures CUSTOM SYSTEM SOLUTIONS e Finned Version for Enhanced Cooling e Blind Mate Connections e Metal Mesh EMI Seal e Watertight 0 Ring Seal e 1 0 Options MIL C 24308 MIL C 26482 MIL C 38999 e Mixed Form Factors PCI and EPIC to PC104 8 Channel 20 Amp Switch Lakenheath Electronics Design Inc Bethesda MD 20814 USA Phone 240 595 0535 www LakenheathElectronics com 2007 Lakenheath Electronics Design Inc All Rights Reserved October 2007 Fus 47 SOFTWARE amp Developmenttools Products PE er eee UE sim 416 Gbyte IDE Flash Solid State Disk in 2 5 inch Rugged Hard Dr
122. oducts based on the new interconnect may appear as early as mid 2008 OCTOBER 2007 Emerson Acquires Motorola s Embedded Communications Computing Group Emerson has announced that it will acquire Motorola Inc s Em bedded Communications Com puting ECC business for 350 million St Louis based Emer son manufactures appliances and tools electronics and telecom munications equipment industrial automation and process control systems and heating ventilating and air conditioning equipment but has become increasingly active in the embedded computing arena through acquisitions Motorola s business which had 2006 revenue of about 520 million provides embedded computing products and services to communication infrastructure and equipment manufacturers in telecommunications medical im aging defense and aerospace and industrial automation Tempe Arizona based ECC has approxi mately 1 100 employees The deal which is expected to close by the end of the year will make Motoro la s ECC business part of Emerson Network Power That division also acquired Artesyn Technologies a little over a year ago David Farr chairman chief executive officer and president of Emerson said in a statement combination of Motorola s ECC business with the 100 million embedded computing business we acquired as part of Artesyn last year establishes Emerson as a leader in the embedded computing in
123. of the pure hardware domain into the SoC and even market specific do mains FPGAs are no longer the choice of only hardware engineers Software engi neers mechanical engineers biologists digital signal processor DSP algorithm developers and embedded programmers now design with FPGAs In the early 90s for example engi neers were creating programmable logic designs with 12 logic cells in a device on a 3 micron fab process with a 95 ns input to output delay They captured these designs in simple schematic capture tools and handled logic synthesis and device place and route with software on a stack of 5 inch floppy disks sequentially fed into a 4 MHz PC as requested Often the tools failed in synthesis and these engineers would have to retrieve their pencils and graph paper fill out state diagrams and convert them to Karnaugh acceptance of field programmable Fie October 2007 maps find their minterms or maxterms and extract a minimized sum of products SOP equation If it got complex they would try the Quine McCluskey algorithm Given the size of the design this was not a difficult task though it required skills unfamiliar to non hardware engineers Soon engineers were developing TTL library elements to help designers more quickly build systems Instead of using single flip flops and NAND gates designers could drop down hundreds of gates by selecting a few 74169 counters or 74139 demultiplexers The deve
124. ount TFT LCD PS 2 aRGB VGA 1 remaining Keyboard Trackball 1280x1024 2993 Combo 2 remaining Make An Offer 2 remaining Make An Offer Make An Offer Purchase excess inventory at clearance prices Don t miss out on these great products PCI Express Waveform Digitizer Boasts 720 Mbyte s Throughput to PC Memory A new 4 lane PCI Ex press PCIe waveform digitizer de signed for OEMs and R amp D customers involved in RF signal analysis biomedical imaging OCT ultrasonics radar lidar etc provides 720 Mbyte s data throughput to PC memory enabling many applications that were previously not possible due to legacy PCI bus bottleneck which is typically limited to 100 Mbytes s The ATS9462 from Alazartech of fers two simultaneous analog inputs that can each be sampled at rates up to 180 Msamples s 180 MSPS ADC per channel at 16 bits per sample providing signal to noise ratio in excess of 73 dB Data from either one or both inputs can be streamed to PC memory without any requirement for onboard acquisition memory buffer The unit is compatible with any x4 x8 or x16 PCle slot The FPGA on board the ATS9462 contains FIFOs and proprietary DMA engines that allow streaming of ac quired data to PC memory without having to stop the acquisi tion session This feature is essential for designers of optical and ultrasonic scanning systems ATS9462 PCle digitizers use FPGA based PHY 2 5 Gbit s transceivers to inter
125. plications from less expensive NAND flash wasn t possible because of the long delay times in initializing NAND file systems A transac tion file system that offers fast restarts addresses this problem allowing the system designer to take advantage of the lower cost of NAND Maximizing Flash Life Besides ensuring high data integrity and fast restart times a flash file system must also implement techniques that pro long flash life thereby increasing the long term reliability and usefulness of the entire embedded system These techniques can include read degradation monitoring dynamic wear lev eling and static wear leveling as well as techniques to avoid file fragmentation Each read operation within a NAND flash block weakens the charge that maintains the data bits As a result a flash block can lose bits after about 100 000 reads To address the problem a well designed file system keeps track of read operations and marks a weak block for refresh before the block s read limit 15 reached The file system will subsequently perform a refresh op eration which copies the data to a new flash block and erases the weak block This erase recharges the weak block allowing it to be reused The file system should also perform ECC computations on all write and read operations to enable recovery from any single bit errors that may occur But while ECC works fine when the flash part loses a single bit on its own it doesn t work when a power failur
126. quire the global trans action logging processes to ensure proper coordination at many levels simultaneously The key requirement of a transaction log is to ensure that actions or events have actually occurred and they have done so in the right order or in the logical arrangements that are required by the application Central logging of the vast amount of data over a network is not viable due to the risk of overloading the network s band width and possibly losing valuable data However a solution based on storing this data in non volatile memory provides a magic bullet As described above the nvSRAM provides highly reliable and robust storage for mission critical data that cannot be lost due to power failure radiated noise etc It also meets the requirements for fast reads and writes as well as infinite read and write cycles with no damage caused to the memory cells as experienced with other non volatile memory technologies like stand alone flash and EEPROM In the above examples the safety of systems revolves around the careful selection of memory technology and the intention to use it properly as a forethought of system design not an after thought The consequences of not dealing with safety issues up front can be far reaching A loss of profile data during an au tomobile accident can result in the ESC unit not functioning at a critical time resulting in another highway fatality High EMI noise induced during an eye surgery pr
127. r calculates distance traveled and a gyroscope determines turn rate This data supplements the GPS data to provide continuous positioning in tunnels indoor parking facilities urban canyons and other environ ments in which it may be difficult to obtain a GPS satellite signal The LEA 4R dead reckoning GPS module enables 100 road coverage while Epson s X V 8000 CB gyroscope offers improved tem perature shock and vibration stability and is designed to sig nificantly speed up the design cycle and ease GPS integration The AEK 4R dead reckoning reference design Evaluation Kit is available now and reference design schematics are avail able upon request U blox Reston VA 703 483 3180 www u blox com 3U cPCI USB Mass Storage Capacities to 64 Gbyte in a Single Slot 3U CompactPCI Flash Disk Mass Stor age is equipped with a USB Interface to meet the increasing military and aerospace demands for high capacity ex treme reliability and small size 3U USB cPCI cards are avail able in both convection cooled and conduction cooled form factors Targa s cPCI Solid State USB Flash Disk has been specifically designed to replace hard disk drives in rugged and environmentally de manding applications The board s main features include a USB 1 1 and USB 2 0 mass storage device and bulk transport USB interconnect via backplane J2 and a single slot capacity of up to 64 Gbytes Ta
128. rage This trans lates into users completing processes faster Therefore the RAM SSD market focuses on applications where the value attached to completing a process faster often for a large number of users outweighs the RAM SSDs costs for the capacity required Writing to disk is a common cause of bottlenecks encountered within particular applications There is a broad range of OLTP applications that require a write to disk before a process complete usu ally to a log file with a small capacity OLTP s dependence on storage perfor mance combined with the large value at tached to accelerating processes with an inadequate capacity for logging them is one of the reasons SSDs are heavily de ployed in financial applications Other industries have similar latency sensitive OLTP processes that directly interface with the customer Failing to respond to a search or purchase request can result in a dissatisfied customer and lost business Another latency sensitive application is batch processing Batch processes have set deadlines that need to be met in order to maintain operational efficiency and compliance as well as a variety of other reasons that are unique to the organiza tion In a database context each process may result in millions of I O operations and CPU cycles The I O component of the process can be accelerated significantly with RAM SSD by shortening the time for each run This allows the business to utilize th
129. ranty and FREE local technical support 8 FIG October 2007 ologies to sensors and actuators data acquisition interfacing and real world applications such as mechatronics robotics and con trols systems Students will focus on RF embedded systems design test and mechatronics topics while receiv ing real world experience in the design prototyping and deploy ment stages of embedded systems The lab includes 12 workstations and four of those offer NI PXI chassis with modular instrumenta tion including arbitrary waveform generators digitizers multime ters power supplies and USB data acquisition hardware New PICMG COM Express Plug and Play Subcommittee Formed Adlink Technology Congatec and MSC have joined together to form a new PICMG COM Express plug and play subcommittee The to be released Express Plug and Play Design Guide aims to increase the use of COM Express modules by defining a set of carrier design guidelines that enable plug and play support and increase compatibility between COM Express modules from vari ous vendors Jeff Munch CTO of Adlink Technology and interim chairman of the new subcommit tee expects this new PICMG car rier board design specification to release in February 2008 After the release of the PICMG COM Express specifica tion COM O several manufactur ers have filled the marketplace with a wide variety of COM Express modules It soon became apparent that a pl
130. rga Systems Ottawa Ontario 613 727 9876 www targasystems com Targa Solid Drive Fast Deep Onboard Solid State Storage System Providing a variety of interfaces such as Gigabit Ethernet Fibre Channel and SCSI and with an AES 256 encryption card option the TornadoX solid state recorder storage system has demonstrated contin uous link record rates of over 728 Mbits s read rates over 690 Mbits s and aggregate concurrent read while write rates of over 900 Mbits s Its manufacturer Systems amp Processes Engineering expects to double these rates within the next 6 months Additional data links can be uti lized to accom modate even higher data rate requirements Designed for operation in extreme environments the conduction cooled TornadoX is the appropriate onboard data storage system for simultaneous support of management systems intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance ISR systems communications systems and instrumentation systems In addition to its high speed data transfer capability the TornadoX is designed to accommodate demanding solid state storage mass require ments SPEC is producing systems with up to 1 6 Tbytes of non volatile flash capacity The system can be configured for storage in excess of 3Tbytes capacity Systems amp Processes Engineering Austin TX 512 691 8161 www spec com October 2007 08 63 OCTOBER 2007 OMMENT and Rugged ve just r
131. rofile of the driver s unique steering and braking habits as well as the vehicle s response to them is gener ated and stored in memory In the event that the vehicle is sub jected to an unstable driving condition that requires the use of the ESC this profile is used as a template to help the system make necessary corrections It is critical that this data not be lost due to power disruptions or EMI noise A robust memory solution is therefore required Calibration and tuning of control system coefficients and recovery from disruption events are keys to the most effective ESC system Handling ride comfort and the ESC function re INE STOP SYSTEMS Introdutes world of new products PCI Express ove r Ca b aas Systems provides complete PCI Express expansion solutions for motherboard SHB System Host Board and CompactPCI Express architectures d 4 irm 4 T TA the ie eU r b has TIRE Ju ow a Expansion Chassis Communication Boards ee Development Systems Cable from a Host PC to One Stop Systems Hybrid CPCI CPCle System at 10Gb per second Ideal platform for CPCI and CPCle board and Garnie 5 software development at highest performance available Single dual or quad port PCI Available for PCI PMG and PTMC T1 E1 J1 and CompactPCI platforms
132. rough Air Cooled Sealed SEF Sealed Extended Fins HES Sealed Heat Exchanger Sidewalls SIXHES Sealed Six Heat Exchangers All our ATR products are delivered Tested and Certified by independent authorized Labs per MIL STD 461E amp MIL STD 810F for Immediate deployment in US Navy amp US Air Force military Fighters and Helicopters VN CM Computer IN 27 True Military COTS Products For more information visit www cmcomputer com or contact us at info cmcomputer com to request our Chassis Catalog SOFTWARE amp Developmentiools Erase Unit hierarchy inodes badblks counts File Data Transactions Block map of a physical device showing different transaction types residing on different flash blocks Reliability through a Pure Transaction Model Some file systems employ a pure transaction based model where each write operation whether of user data or of file system metadata consists of an atomic operation In this model a write operation either completes or behaves as if it didn t take place As a result the file system can survive across a power failure even during an active flash write or block erase This provides the reliability and recoverability needed by safety critical devices To prevent file corruption transaction file systems never overwrite existing live data A write in the middle of a file up date always writes to a new unused area Consequently
133. s 2 3 Gbps each tla f 3 T Enclosure Available VO Solutions ma i 1 E a Ly 1 4 rack width Conductive cooling for AMC cards w oprional fan Desktop and auromorive mounts available PCI Express with 200 MB s data rares S line PEA Xpress Host AtA SMa 16 BLISS Hz AT r NWA t Available 1 0 Solations AIAD 10 4 D2 Tethered or Autonomous Operation TAT i A3 MI VIS Continuous 2207 Cabled PCle nr X3 DIO it 66 Optional surance operates E F a X3 SD 216 16 bit A D x16 Jig Lu TIE real time serra contral ar 4 5 400M a MASSES 1 4 AML S00 MSPS 6 bir TA x2 IGB DRS DA X5 2 10M 210 MSPS 14 bit A D x4 512MB DDR DRAM p ar rares ro 4000 M He 12V DC Only Operation Perfece for portable Or walchorm generators k ve data lcm AS SDF 20 24 hir AMDT xt A 3 Servor l hin 250 KHz ultra low latency amp glitch energy Using Innovative Integration s FrameWork Logic VHDL source code or Simulink MATLAB board support package you can readily customize FPGA functionality to include real time processing such as independent FIR and filters on each channel real time FFT processing ultra fast feedback and control loops and much more Develop DSP in Simulink MATLAB then go straight to hardwar
134. s and holds the tors also enhance the reliability of AdvancedMC systems under AdvancedMC module against the connector housing shock and vibrations By systematically positioning the module precisely in the Learn more about the 5 con card features at connector con card connectors reduce the maximum innovation by ept con card4 When you re at 30 000 feet quality matters VersaLogic Corp knows about building dependable high reliability embedded computers for mission critical applications Every board we make is run through exhaustive quality tests ensuring that we deliver only the best And with our world class service and five year availability guarantee things won t stall out on your production line either In fact based on industry wide surveys by Venture Development Corporation VersaLogic is the only single board computer manufacturer that was awarded the coveted Platinum Vendor award for the past four consecutive years So before your program launches make sure you choose the company with the quality and service to take you where you need to go No one else even comes close x VersALocic OR PORATION www VersaLogic com jet 1 800 824 3163
135. s changing PCI Ex press over cable pioneered by One Stop Systems lets systems communicate up to seven meters between chassis In addition I O and clustering using PCIe switches being introduced by Dolphin will enable fiber optic connections of at least 300 meters between nodes Not only that One Stop s SuperSwitch technology will en able PC to PC networking via nontransparent bridging between CPUS on a backplane or among boxes Why then would anyone use InfiniBand when an all PCle solution is at hand And then there s USB USB 2 0 is already finding its way into the embedded space most recently in the form of Stackable USB developed by PC 104 maker Micro sys But it is showing up in other forms as well driven again by economies of scale low cost components and software compatibility Now Intel HP TI and other companies have formed a group to promote USB 3 0 which will have speeds approaching 5 Gbits s and will signifi cantly reduce power consumption yet be backward compatible with previous USB specs Add to this the just beginning deploy ment of Certified Wireless USB and the potential for low cost high speed peripherals both wired and handheld takes a quan tum leap These developments in the world of interconnects also fuel the trend toward the use of small form factor boards which are primarily PC based This means that most of them incorporate PCIs as well as Ethernet as a matter of course USB can and will be included
136. software The use of non volatile memory for the storage of system control and calibration settings is the key to ensuring safety within the system However there are other factors as well The reliability of a solution depends on its independence from other subsystems as well as the smallest number of reliable compo nents to perform the data storage function Designs that use a Battery Backed SRAM BBSRAM can suffer from the extreme EMI that can couple into this type of memory and disrupt the data The data must be stored securely without dependence on a continuous standby power source One solution would be to store data in stand alone flash or EEPROM memory ICs However the calculations and continuous calibra tion in a foreground process requires high speed and continuous updates Since these flash and EEPROM based devices do not have SRAM integrated onto the chip they are 1000 times too slow to support the required write speeds and their memory cells wear out after only 10 000 to 100 000 write cycles On the other hand since the nvSRAM has both SRAM and EEPROM on the same chip the fast access times offered by the on chip SRAM as fast as 15 ns provide the capability for the fastest possible reboot It also supports an infinite number of read write cycles so there is no risk of data loss due to wear out effects since the vast majority of the read write cycles take place on the SRAM not on nvSRAM s on chip EEPROM Sinc
137. ster time to market than custom solutions An equivalent system built using commercial FPGA hardware and IP cores illustrates the benefits of using signal processing systems featuring multiple A D converters with at tached scalable FPGA based architectures as opposed to using customized solutions The forthcoming VXS 610 and XMC 210 products from Nallatech could provide such a solution The V XS 610 is a V XS based FPGA and PowerPC based compute card that features two Xilinx Virtex 5 FPGAs a PowerPC and two XMC mezzanine slots The XMC 210 is an FPGA and data acqui sition XMC mezzanine that provides FPGA processing and data acquisition capability with dual channel 8 bit 3 Gsample s A D functionality and a single Xilinx Virtex 5 FPGA A configuration of one V XS 610 and two XMC 210s is shown in Figure 2 The configuration in Figure 2 can han dle four incoming analog data streams and digitize them simultaneously at 3 Gsamples s Channels 0 and 1 communicate digitized data directly into one of the XMC FPGAs while channels 2 and 3 come on the other XMC This data can initially be processed in the XMC FPGAs before it is communicated to the FPGAs on the V XS card for further processing The high speed communications link between the FPGAs enables process ing of intermediate products from multiple channels on the same card Since the FPGAs are connected directly into the high speed serial Rapid IO communications fabric this intercha
138. t is preferable to obtain a single turnkey firmware package that addresses all the needs of the installation and requires no coding especially consid ering the ease of deployment for individu als other than trained IT professionals Firmware may contain additional features such as a Web server and Web manager for an intuitive browser interface remote information retrieval and simplified net work configuration While the advantages of network en abled devices are great so is the task of managing the equipment As mentioned previously there is no standard to define embedded networking technology Thus many gateway and server products will provide different user interfaces to man age the embedded device to which it is connected If TCP IP is available then a device can be managed directly through a Web browser if its IP address is known Other methods of interfacing with de vices include pass through control and Java control The benefits of networking embedded devices are clearly the reason for its wide spread adoption in numerous industries and disparate applications Companies have realized the advantages of a real time and extended information enter prise that helps to reduce operating costs by enabling them to access monitor and capture business intelligence remotely With these new telepresent based busi ness services companies can also deliver new applications and revenue streams With the increasing number
139. t limiting Power sharing capable rh componen count Imagine 6 AMCs with an Power and J TAG Modules all in a 1U 19 rackmount MicroTCA solution Impossible Not with the MicroBox from Elma Electronic and MicroBlade The creative design maximizes performance in minimal space With a redundant push pull cooling configuration using two sets of 4x heavy duty fons MicroBlade HDD AMC thermal management is breeze Check out our thermal simulation studies and see SK calle ix cma for yourself ERE SAS in mad and fut sze tum tacions Capacity to 30068 Extensively tested ventien HPM omman USA Elma Electronic Inc d aiden Inc Phone 510 456 3400 Fax 510456783 Ema Qmm Web ORANO GAST SOLUTIONS Engineering ACROMAG 1 0 SOLUTIONS e Link Status LED LED RJ45 Wiper Ethernet Contacts Serial Data Out Transmit amp Receive e lt Chassis gt Serial Data In Earth Ground 9 i irs External Reset 3 3 VDC Power Mus RN Signal Ground COUNTER TIMER Device Networking Application DHCP Telnet Internal Software Portfolio Operating System Modules such as Lantronix XPort Direct offer affordable network connectivity for applications where advanced Web services are not Figure 2 required tial growth and scalability since similar devices
140. t to have to carry more than one around at a time and if large file transfers are necessary at least one gigabyte of data will be required to hold the desired amount of data Low power is also essential and although the amount of power needed to perform a transfer is not as important the fact that the device can retain all the information with no power at all makes for a purely portable memory device As flash densities improve expect an ever growing list of applications for the USB thumb drive It is not far fetched to believe that most software and possibly movies could be distributed on this tech nology in the next five years Portable media devices such as MP3 players and cell phones have definitely been on the rise With the innumerable variety of devices available and the pub lic s desire to have smaller devices with more capabilities flash seems like the best way to satisfy those needs Flash is the perfect fit for the same reasons that flash is the perfect memory choice for the thumb drive It is rugged dense and uses less power The power feature is slightly more interesting in this integration given the fact that with lower power consump INDUSTRY Insight Matching 1 0 Solutions and Data Problems Key The table shows the usefulness of various storage technologies as solution Data Patterns Tend to Cached Cached DDR Solid be RAID Flash RAID State Disk random random High writes Sequential Single Threaded
141. tel Architecture Corvalent is an Affiliate member of the Intel Communications Alliance a community of embedded and communications developers and solution providers iA CAGRVALENT Pme 1284 WS eS www corvalent com martinscorner October 2007 imis 9 e L CONFIGURABLE PROCESSING PLATFORMS INCONT FPGAs Deliver for Next Generation Signal Processing Systems For speed flexibility small size and interconnect options today s latest generation of FPGAs Is the more frequent choice for high throughput systems and for moving the digital stages of processing closer to the analog signal source by Craig Sanderson Nallatech omplex signal environments are plac C increasing performance demands on embedded digital signal process ing DSP systems Signal processing appli cations including satellite communications radar software defined radio SDR and sig nal intelligence require ever higher comput ing performance and I O bandwidth This needs to be delivered with lower power con sumption and on platforms that can quickly transition from the R amp D lab to deployed systems often in harsh environments The latest signal converter technolo gies and signal processing trends are in creasing the demand on processing en gines Advances in signal conversion tech nologies are resulting in higher resolution and sampling rates of digitized signals In modern signal processing systems cur rent trends
142. times the transmission range of non amplified products without adversely affecting power requirements The software can be configured to manage the power of dif ferent types of energy harvesting devices Greenpeak devices can accommodate a variety of energy harvesting devices from the dripping energy of solar cells to the explosive energy of piezo electric torsion and electromagnetic fields Modules utilize all of these sources in a way that minimizes power consumption and facilitates reliable operation in a battery free environment EQUES eae a Greenpeak has created a low power self forming and self healing mesh technology that enables wireless devices to build a reliable and efficient communication chain Each device in the network can act as a repeater for other wireless devices thereby Spanning larger distances Un like mesh solutions that require battery power or cabling for the main routing nodes Greenpeak networks utilize smart power up power down and synchroni zation techniques that enable all mesh nodes to operate in a low power mode without a bat tery or power cabling 1 i a The Greenpeak modules will be of fered via a worldwide network of local distributors Pricing for the Greenpeak Lime module GP 08 starts at 21 A Starter Kit is also available for 1 390 and a development suite is priced at 6 950 Greenpeak Utrecht The Netherlands www greenpeak com October 2007 F
143. tuitive user interface and high level intelligent design objects that are tightly coupled to the underlying kernel architecture The result is an easy to use design tool that allows the developer to rapidly move between design concepts and generated C code VisualRTXC provides a visual abstraction and design aids for each of the typical design phases of the software development life cycle including functional design detailed design coding and documentation With VisualRTXC designers visualize their design with intuitive objects and flow charts generate ANSI C code and then document the entire project using a sophisticated latility of flash graphical environment This powerful tool takes full advantage of the power and scalability nad 4M bat of the RTXC Quadros RTOS The combined solution enables rapid prototyping improves i No Battery Required team communications and lowers software maintenance costs IUS Infinite Read STKI4EC8 512 Write Cycles VisualRTXC can be used as a quick prototyping tool or as a complete development i h led with compilers linkers and other traditional devel 1 Eu ca environment when coupled with compliers linkers and other traditional development tools K14EC16 256 Engineering managers can also realize increased engineer productivity with standardized Kbit x 16 devices deliver fast access SRAM code development across team members allowing for the ease of sharing projects and t
144. ug and play specification was required to mitigate carrier board incompatibilities There fore Adlink Congatec and MSC applied to the PICMG group for the creation of a subcommittee to define a COM Express Plug and Play Design Guide to increase adoption of COM O standard through a plug and play carrier board design specification Congatec started the COM Express PnP Initiative which fo cused on carrier board design Now this initiative has further INDUSTRY INSIDER evolved to address the incompat ibilities seen between different vendors using proprietary carrier board designs by providing a defi nite specification to increase and streamline the adoption and use of COM Express products Warning over Hacking Kits for Sale on eBay Tier 3 a behavioral analysis IT security specialist has warned companies that hacker toolkits which were previously confined to specialist hidden forums on the In ternet are now being sold openly on auction sites such as eBay This is a serious develop ment said Geoff Sweeney Tier 3 s CTO who added that where previously would be hackers had to score brownie points to gain access to the hacker forums and source the kits the fact that they are now on open sale on eBay is very worrying It basically puts high level hacking tools includ ing surreptitious Trojan loaders and Web site hacking utilities into the hands of almost any Internet user including no
145. ughput across all channels at rates up to 15 Hz per channel and thermocouple easy connect for fast setup There are also eight opto isolated digital input lines for monitoring and eight opto isolated digital output lines for driving relays Temppoint is available in four separate versions Thermocouple inputs for USB RTD inputs for USB Thermocouple inputs for Ether net LXI and RTD inputs for Ethernet LXI Temppoint ships with a ready to mea sure application The Temppoint application is an executable program that can be modified or expanded to meet a particular need The Temp point application allows you to acquire tempera ture measurements from up to 48 thermocouple or RTD channels display analyze and save data to disk all without writing any code Addition ally the application can export data to other ap plications such as Microsoft Excel and Matlab Pricing starts at 6 995 Data Translation Marlboro MA 508 481 3700 www datatranslation com age Board Boasts Core Duo Core2 Duo Processor in Three Rugged Levels A 6U CompactPCI PICMG 2 16 compliant board features up to 4 Gbytes of soldered RAM and soldered application flash and comes in three rugged levels defined as R1 R2 and R3 Based on the Intel Core Duo Core2 Duo processor and mobile chipset the CP6001 from Kontron features high performance with a low thermal design power and a set of data communication and multimedia interfaces
146. using that protocol can share re sources to achieve connectivity and en able data capture Such a scenario 15 far more appealing than connecting devices individually with another I O port like the PC s serial port Serial connectivity makes data col lection expensive due to the required la bor intensive resources expertise of the operator and time involved in that type of a serial process In addition devices not networked make data collection depen dent on location since data resides pri marily at the point of creation Another downfall of the serial scenario is the de lay in accessing and analyzing the data It will not necessarily be real time which conflicts with the basis of the informa tion enterprise environment Offering alternatives to the cumbersome overhead discussed earlier provides an opportunity to reduce operational costs in an extended enterprise network Many businesses have adapted their IT infrastructures to take advantage of the latest networking technology providing location independent access to business intelligence A natural complement to this level of connectivity is the employment of networked devices that use the latest em bedded technology for seamless network access It becomes possible to create tele presence based business services which enhance interaction communication and mobilization among users For instance any number of remote users can share a networked device as though all were
147. vices provid ing they have an eBay and PayPal account said Sweeney Sweeney went on to say that the hacker kits are usually sold on eBay as ethical hacker train ing courses but the courses also include a wealth of utilities for educational purposes This is really bad news for companies of all sizes as it means they have to be extra careful on the IT secu rity front As we ve said before companies can no longer rely on a single line of defense for their IT resource and now need to consider extending their security umbrella to include behavioral analysis technology he said Only then can they have a safety net capable of intercepting both known and unknown electronic attacks on their IT systems he added MARTIN S FA 4 t Paj e 1 i a Em homiedrown database lt AAA Lu m 41 performance gt mc aman system nihegates databases dont scale and are slow and thats b a a a a d for embedded systems McObjects eXtremeDB in memory database system IMDS delivers stunning performance along with High Availability an intuitive and type safe API and other critical features Count on eXtremeDB for embedded systems software that won t make you sheepish ject precision data management www mcobject com Phone 1 425 888 8505 Fax 1 425 888 8508 Download benchmark white papers and free trial eXtremeDB
148. ystem host board SHB is targeted at performance hungry applications The PCI 760 from Kontron boosts power to 4 x 2 66 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad proces sors Q6700 which is suitable for asynchronous real time embedded multiprocessing applications The PCT 760 is also designed to meet the require ments of the upcoming 45 nm processors a fea ture that will extend the availability for long life applications The PCI 760 is equipped with Intel s built in comprehensive Intel AMT 3 0 remote manage ment engine offering enhanced security remote manageability and cost savings for the embedded computing market System managers of densely packed space saving servers can remotely carry out tasks such as installation of a new OS or setting BIOS parameters without the need for additional re mote management hardware or an on site presence If there is an operating system failure the Kontron PCI 760 allows the system manager to run diag nostics update patches and reboot the system via the network from a central service system within a few minutes The Kontron PCI 760 provides state of the art system security since it supports the Intel Trusted Execution Technology and has an onboard trusted platform module TPM 1 2 for software and data protection With up to 1333 MHz front side bus the PCI 760 supports up to 8 Gbytes of fast DDR2 SDRAM and features a full range of interfaces 1 x PEG 4 x PCle x1 and 1 x PCI routed to the backpla
149. ystem software that manages flash mem ory must do more than simply provide fast read and write perfor mance it must also prevent corruption caused by power failures and be fully accessible within milliseconds after a reboot mbedded systems today use flash memory in ways that Shedding the FAT Historically most embedded devices have used variants of the File Allocation Table FAT file system which was originally designed for desktop PCs When writing data to a file this system first updates the metadata that describes the file system structure then it updates the file itself If a power failure occurs at any point during this multi step operation the metadata may indicate that the file has been updated when in fact the file remains un changed FAT file systems also use relatively large cluster sizes resulting in inefficient use of space for each file Get Connected with companies mentioned in this article www rtcmagazine com getconnected 36 rim October 2007 Transaction Header The mapping of transaction data to physical device media in a pure transaction file system Due to these corruption issues most file systems now use transaction technology A transaction is simply a description of an atomic file operation A transaction either succeeds or fails in its operation allowing the file system to self heal after a sudden power loss The file system collects transactions in a list and pro cesses them in or

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