In particular, the device is well suited to implementations where it interfaces with other boards based around Intel processors, such as those available from Concurrent Technologies.
The VPX-D16A4-PCIE complements CommAgility’s existing VPX-D16A4, which provides similar functionality, but is aimed primarily at wireless applications. Rather than 20Gbaud RapidIO links, the VPX-D16A4-PCIE includes a 10Gbaud 2x PCIe interface to the VPX backplane for each of the two on-board Texas Instruments SoC devices.
The board is based around a TI TCI6638K2K KeyStone-based SoC and a TI TMS320C6678 SoC. Between them, the SoCs contain sixteen C66x DSP cores and four ARM Cortex-A15 cores, as well as baseband and networking accelerators. Closely coupled with TI’s HyperLink bus and Gigabit Ethernet, the SoCs each feature a 2Gb DDR3 memory bank.
The VPX-D16A4-PCIE, which is available in conduction cooled or air cooled versions, supports PCI, Ethernet, CPRI, Multi-Gigabit Transceiver (MGT) and RF or analogue I/O, making it a flexible solution.
For additional I/O or co-processing, the main DSP is connected to a Xilinx Kintex-7 K325T FPGA via PCIe and the AIF2 CPRI interface. This also features Gigabit Ethernet, as well as its own backplane MGT connections. To enable interfacing to an RTM with specialised I/O, the FPGA features multiple LVDS, GPIO and serial connections to the P2 connector. For flexible generation of RF clocks from a standard reference clock input, the device also features a PLL.
For application and data storage, the main DSP and FPGA each feature a large bank of flash memory, with FLASH upgrades and boot selection managed in conjunction with the Board Management Controller for maximum security.
To accelerate customer development, a full Linux BSP and example software support is provided. This is based on TI’s Multicore Software Dev Kit for Linux and the Xilinx Vivado FPGA development suite. MIMOon’s mi!SmallCellPHY-TI is available fully integrated and tested, providing a complete LTE physical layer.
Glen Fawcett, CEO, Concurrent Technologies, said: “The VPX-D16A4-PCIE complements our range of SBCs and provides the high signal processing performance that is needed for many of today’s applications in harsh environments.”
“Our customers now have a choice of two high performance processing boards in the rugged VPX form factor, allowing them to select PCIe or RapidIO to best meet their application requirements and put together a full system with other vendors’ boards, such as Concurrent Technologies,” commented Edward Young, Managing Director, CommAgility.
The VPX-D16A4-PCIE will be available in Q2 2015.