PCI board processor

Six-core Intel® Xeon® processor available on a 6U CompactPCI® board

Concurrent Technologies has released the PP 68x/m71 family of 6U CompactPCI® boards, one of the first embedded product ranges to feature the 2.00 GHz Six-Core Intel® Xeon® processor L5638 or the 1.87 GHz Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor L5618; both processors are from the Intel® embedded roadmap which offers at least seven year availability. With up to 48 Gbytes of DDR3-1066 ECC SDRAM, two 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports, and several SAS and SATA300 disk interfaces these boards are pin compatible with Concurrent Technologies’ popular PP 66x/m71 family. These latest Intel Xeon processors, based on 32nm process technology, now support four or six higher performance cores with faster AES encryption instructions and larger last level caches. Therefore, the PP 68x/m71 family have one of the highest performance specifications available to 6U CompactPCI users today and is particularly suitable for CPU intensive processing applications within the telecommunications, defence and homeland security market sectors.

The PP 68x/m71 family is based on the Intel® Xeon® 5600 Platform, consisting of the Intel® Xeon processor, the Intel® 5520 I/O Hub and the Intel® ICH10R I/O Controller Hub. The Intel Xeon 5600 platform provides impressive performance-per-watt and integrates the memory controller into the processor for reduced memory latency. The Intel Xeon processors feature Intel® QuickPath Technology and Intel® Turbo Boost Technology which, along with Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology, deliver top performance for bandwidth-intensive applications. Intel QuickPath Technology provides a high-speed, point-to-point connection between the microprocessor and the Intel® 5520 I/O Hub. Intel Turbo Boost Technology elevates performance for specific workloads by increasing processor core frequency.

Glen Fawcett, CEO for Concurrent Technologies, commented, “This product is a perfect upgrade from previous products and ensures that existing customers can protect their software investment and maximize their development efforts.”

The PP 68x/m71 products benefit from the Intel Xeon processor’s large last level on-die cache of 12 Mbytes and its ability to directly access (via a 1066 MHz memory bus) up to 48 Gbytes of DDR3-1066 ECC SDRAM in four DIMM sockets. The processor has a very fast I/O data path to the Intel 5520 I/O Hub via the 20 Gbytes/sec Intel Quick Path Interface.

For high performance I/O, control and data processing flexibility, the PP 68x/m71 supports, via the front panel, a PMC/XMC site (133 MHz PCI-X and up to x8 PCI Express® lanes) as well as optional I/O interconnections via two 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports (copper or optical). The rear I/O configuration can provide an interface for either an optional PMC rear I/O board or an optional on-board 8 port hardware RAID Controller board supporting SAS and SATA300 drives. The PP 68x/m71 can operate as a system controller board (left slot or right slot), a peripheral board or as a satellite board (blade). Support is also provided for PICMG® 2.16 (Ethernet fabric), PICMG 2.9 (IPMI) and PICMG 2.1 (hot swap); the CompactPCI® backplane interface operates at 33/66MHz PCI signalling speeds.

The PP 68x/m71 includes three 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet interfaces (one front and two rear) and the front panel also provides USB 2.0, RS-232, digital (1600 x 1200) and dual analog graphics (2048 x 1536), keyboard and mouse interfaces. The rear connectors provide four further USB 2.0 ports, an RS-232 port, and four SATA300 interfaces, as well as the connections to the optional RAID controller. Other features included are a watchdog timer, long duration timer, LAN boot firmware and options for an onboard 2.5-inch SATA300 disk and CompactFlash™ storage. For applications requiring rear I/O connections, a single or dual slot transition module is available which can be optionally fitted with a USB Flash disk and up to two 2.5-inch SATA300 disks.

For ease of integration, the PP 68x/m71 family of boards support many of today’s leading operating systems, including Linux®, Windows® Server 2008, Windows® Server 2003, Windows® XP Embedded, Windows® XP, Solaris™, VxWorks® and QNX®. This includes, as applicable, support for 64-bit operating systems.