PCI fault insertion card!

Pickering Interfaces is expanding its range of PCI based switching solutions with the introduction of its first PCI Fault Insertion Card.

This new PCI Fault Insertion Card (model 50-190) is available as either a one or two slot short PCI card with the following features:

• 75, 64 or 36 channels of fault insertion
• One or two fault insertion busses, each of which can select from three fault sources
• The ability to introduce open circuit paths, shorts between paths or shorts to fault connections such as battery or ground
• 2 Amp hot switch capacity for powers up to 60W and voltages to 165VDC/115VAC
• High bandwidth suited for use on Can and FlexRay bus systems

Pickering Interfaces continues to promote its test solutions in multiple platforms by offering fault insertion in different form factors (PXI and PCI) with the same options. This offering allows the user to choose the most appropriate platform for their test system. The 50-190 PCI Fault Insertion Card has the same functionality as their widely used 40-190 PXI Fault Insertion Module.

Keith Moore, Managing Director of Pickering, explained “Over the last year or so, we have been expanding our PCI product family in response to market demands. One would think that PCI is nearly obsolete, given that it is no longer available on desktop PCs. However, we have found that the industrial PC market, which is a larger market than PXI, still embraces PCI cards and expects to support them for many more years. As PCI products are electrically similar to standard PXI devices, it is a natural migration for Pickering to re-layout many of our popular PXI switch modules, thus supporting a greater portion of the test market.”

COTS rugged systems

GE Intelligent Platforms has expanded the company’s range of COTS Rugged Systems. With growing pressure on prime contractors and integrators to reduce risk, costs and time-to-market, these preconfigured and pre-tested systems provide the flexibility of in-house development with the proven availability, cost-effectiveness, reliability and roadmap of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions. They are designed for deployment in demanding control appli­cations such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), manned aircraft, helicopters, over- and underwater research vessels, ground vehicles, and locomotives.

GE now offers an extensive range of pre-validated, application-ready COTS Rugged Systems, having previously announced 2-slot and 3-slot rugged CompactPCI® systems featuring Intel® processor technology and 2-slot and 3-slot PowerPC™-based rugged CompactPCI systems. Further introductions are planned throughout the year.

The newly-announced 4-slot systems, which give greater configuration flexibility to the COTS Rugged Systems product line, utilize conduction-cooled boards and are housed in a rugged convection-cooled chassis. The systems are available with processors from either Intel or Freescale™. Optimum customer choice is provided through the availability of no fewer than 25 standard configurations; additional configurations can be readily made available according to customer requirements. These systems undergo standard qualification tests - such as MIL-STD-810 and 704 - to allow customer projects to more rapidly achieve a high Technology Readiness Level (TRL).

“In a difficult economy, and in the face of significant budget cuts, our customers are looking to minimize development time and cost and to eliminate program risk to the maximum extent possible,” said Paul Scanlon, General Manager, Military & Aerospace Systems, GE Intelligent Platforms. “Our COTS rugged systems allow our customers to shorten lead-times, minimize expensive NRE, and lessen their risk associated with attempting to integrate piece parts from multiple sources.”

GE’s COTS Rugged Systems have been integrated and tested, and a Board Support Packages (BSP) and drivers can be provided to ease application integration and reduce software development time.

A broad range of I/O capability can be configured, including Ethernet, USB, serial, MIL-STD-1553, ARINC 429, DAC, ADC, discrete, VGA and CANbus. A 64GByte SSD SATA storage device is also optionally available.

Family of boards

Concurrent Technologies has released the TP 702/38x family of 3U 4HP CompactPCI® boards, featuring the Intel® Core™ i7 processor family. Depending on the application requirements a choice of processors is supported: the 2.53GHz Intel® Core™ i7-610E, 2.0GHz Intel® Core™ i7-620LE and the 1.06GHz Intel® Core™ i7-620UE. Based on 32nm process technology and the Intel® integrated memory/graphics controller architecture, these processors are from the Intel® embedded roadmap which offers at least seven year availability. With up to 8 Gbytes of DDR3-1066 ECC SDRAM, an optional XMC site, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, two SATA disk interfaces and optional graphics, the TP 702/38x offers rear I/O interfaces that are compatible with the popular TP 402/35x family providing a continuing upgrade path. Commercial and extended temperature versions are also available, and a compatible range of ruggedized, conduction-cooled or air-cooled versions will be available shortly. The boards are particularly suitable for CPU intensive processing applications within the defence, homeland security, industrial control, and transportation market sectors.

The TP 702/38x family is based on the combination of the Intel® Core i7 processor and an Intel® Platform Controller Hub (PCH), the Mobile Intel® QM57 Express chipset. This combination benefits from the integration of the graphics controller and the memory controller into the processor, resulting in reduced memory latency and improved performance-per-watt. The Intel Core i7 processors feature Intel® Direct Media Interface Technology and Intel® Flexible Display Interfaces to the PCH to provide simultaneous high-speed non-graphic traffic and video/graphic traffic. The processors feature Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology to allow multiple simultaneous execution threads in each core and Intel® Turbo Boost Technology which elevates performance for specific workloads by increasing processor core frequency on one core when the second core and/or graphics engine utilization level is low. The CPU and graphics engines have separate Turbo modes, and by using simple BIOS setup options, the user can disable either or both of the turbo modes, or pre-set a bias towards one or the other feature.

Mass storage (for the operating system, application software and application data) is provided by the removable 4 Gbytes flash drive and two Serial ATA150 interfaces via J2. An additional removable single or dual channel flash drive module is available, accessed via the onboard XMC connector. As well as being removable, the flash drives also support write protect inputs making them ideal for security sensitive applications.

The TP 702/38x rear I/O provides two high-speed USB 2.0 ports, one RS232/422/485 and one RS232 port, plus two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces with an option for a 2048 x 1536 analog graphics interface. The 32-bit CompactPCI control/data plane throughput can operate at 33/66MHz backplane PCI signaling speeds. Other features provided are PC real-time clock, watchdog timer, long duration timer, up to 8 GPIO signals and a legacy speaker interface. The TP 702/38x-RC conduction-cooled version supports, in a single 3U 4HP slot, an XMC site (via a x4 PCI Express port). All versions can operate as a system controller for up to 7 peripheral slots with hot-swap control, as a peripheral board or as a blade.

For ease of integration, the TP 702/38x family of boards support many of today’s leading operating systems, including Linux®, Windows® Server 2008, Windows® Server 2003, Windows® 7, Windows® 7 Embedded, Windows® XP Embedded, Windows® XP, Solaris™, VxWorks® and QNX®.

New PXI and PCI interfaces

New Interfaces are Ideal for Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation, Rapid Control Prototyping, Bus Monitoring and Automation Control

National Instruments has announced new PXI and PCI interfaces that expand the NI-XNET platform to include support for the Local Interconnect Network (LIN) communication bus. The new PXI-8516 and PCI-8516 LIN interfaces make it possible for engineers and scientists to develop LIN applications in LabVIEW, LabWindows™/CVI and C/C++ for Windows and LabVIEW Real-Time OSs. As part of the NI-XNET platform, the new PXI and PCI interfaces are ideal for applications that require real-time, high-speed manipulation of many LIN frames and signals, such as hardware-in-the-loop simulation, rapid control prototyping, bus monitoring and automation control. In addition, the new interfaces provide integrated support for importing and using signals from LDF databases, which simplify scheduling and scaling of LIN messages on the bus.


NI-XNET is a family of high-performance and easy-to-use PXI- and PCI-based products designed to communicate with embedded networks including Controller Area Network (CAN), LIN and FlexRay. NI-XNET integrates easily with LabVIEW, uses the same API for CAN, LIN and FlexRay and automatically translates low-level frame data into usable engineering data. The new interfaces combine the performance and flexibility of low-level microcontroller interfaces with the speed and power of Windows and LabVIEW Real-Time OS development. They can also be integrated easily into desktop real-time PCs as well as real-time PXI systems.

Designed for performance and ease of use in demanding applications, the PXI and PCI interfaces are ideal for high-signal-count, low-latency environments. The interfaces feature the NI-XNET device-driven DMA engine for coupling the LIN bus to host memory, which reduces system latency from milliseconds to microseconds. The engine makes it possible for the onboard processor to move LIN frames and signals between the interface and the user program without CPU interrupts, freeing host processor time for processing complex models and applications