Radstone Commits To 6U VPX: Multiprocessor and SBC are first family members

Multiprocessor, single board computer are first family members Billerica, MA: November 21st 2006:  Following on from the company’s commitment, announced in May, to the creation of a family of 3U VPX form factor solutions, Radstone Embedded Computing today announced the first two members of a new family of 6U VPX form factor solutions.  Further announcements of additional 6U VPX products are expected in the near future. The 6U VPX form factor DSP230 is an advanced, fully rugged multiprocessor solution featuring quad Freescale 8641D processors and four Gigabytes of DDR2 SDRAM memory.  Serial RapidIO enables a broad range of connectivity options, while support for PCI Express provides customers with access to extensive end point solutions, as well as a link to the onboard XMC site.  The SBC610 6U VPX single board computer is also based on the Freescale 8641D processor and, like the DSP230, supports both Serial RapidIO and PCI Express.  With two Gigabytes of memory, the SBC610 achieves significant configuration flexibility through the provision of two XMC or PMC sites, together with a site for Radstone’s unique AFIX (Additional Flexible Interface Extension) daughter card.  The four fabric ports on the SBC610 can be individually set to be either PCI Express or Serial RapidIO. “With this announcement, we believe that Radstone has made the most complete commitment to the VPX standard of any manufacturer in the embedded computing market for military systems,” said Peter Cavill, President of Radstone Embedded Computing.  “Our earlier commitment to 3U VPX has been received very favorably by many of the industry’s leading companies, and has resulted in significant opportunities.  We expect these new 6U VPX solutions to achieve similar success. Radstone’s 6U VPX product range is competitively advantaged in three key areas.  First, VME interoperability is featured at the board level, allowing the easy integration of Radstone 6U VPX solutions with legacy VMEbus solutions.  This is consistent with Radstone’s long history of ensuring maximum compatibility and upgradeability, and is designed to provide a compelling migration path for existing customers. Second, the new Radstone 6U VPX solutions are all ‘AXIS-enabled’, meaning that they support Radstone’s unique, innovative AXIS Advanced Multiprocessor Integrated Software, which enables the rapid development of the sophisticated multiprocessor systems that characterize many defense computing applications today.  The benefit of this is that customers can begin work on application development on today’s hardware, with a straightforward migration path to Radstone’s 6U VPX solutions when they become available. The third competitive advantage of Radstone’s 6U VPX family is the choice of serial RapidIO (sRIO) for the enabling fabric.  While PCI Express is featured to provide customers with state of the art, industry standard peripherals, sRIO is demonstrably the fabric of choice for multiprocessing systems with its inherent scalability, flexibility (easily enabling mesh, pipeline and ring topologies), high performance and low latency.  sRIO is also naturally complementary to the Freescale 8641 processor, eliminating the need for bridge silicon that would compromise performance. Availability of the SBC610 and DSP230 is scheduled for mid-2007. Download - DSP230 Data Sheet Download - SBC610 Data Sheet