High-performance, pre-integrated and tested VPX systems!

Pentek has announced the launch of the newest member of the SPARK™ development systems, the Model 8267. The Model 8267 is pre-configured 3U VPX system to speed application development for the expansive family of Pentek Flexor® FMC, Cobalt® Virtex-6 and Onyx® Virtex-7 FPGA 3U VPX software radio and data acquisition I/O boards. The Model 8267 is delivered with the selected Pentek hardware configured for either Windows 7 Professional or Linux operating systems along with ReadyFlow® BSP drivers and software examples, fully installed and tested. This pre-integrated system not only targets research and development in a lab environment, but also serves as a platform for deployed applications.

“The Model 8267 SPARK development platform enables engineering development teams at prime contractors or small companies to immediately run example applications out-of-the-box. We tackle the complexity of VPX and work with customers to resolve the profile, topology and module interaction dependencies inherent with VPX system architectures,” stated Rodger Hosking, vice president of Pentek. He added, “All hardware is installed in the appropriate slots, fully configured with proper cabling, power and cooling strategies. The CPU board is configured with optimized BIOS and operating system settings. The customer simply needs to unpack the system, power up and start developing. This proven strategy significantly reduces initial integration efforts.”

Pentek collaborates with customers to select from the extensive family of 526xx & 536xx Cobalt, 527xx & 537xx Onyx and 5973 Flexor FMC-based 3U VPX modules and then evaluates system requirements to define the Model 8267 configuration that is most appropriate for the final application. Various VPX topologies and profile configurations are evaluated to determine best fit alternatives for a given application. Engineering teams big and small alike can take advantage of Pentek expertise to SPARK their design on a tight development schedule.

ReadyFlow Software
Pentek ReadyFlow drivers and board support libraries are preinstalled and tested. ReadyFlow includes example applications with full source code, a command line interface for immediate control over hardware without the need for compiling any code, and Pentek’s Signal Analyzer, a full-featured analysis tool that continuously displays live signals in both time and frequency domains.

System Implementation
Built on a professional 4U 9-slot, rackmount workstation, the Model 8267 is populated with a high-performance VPX single board computer with an Intel Core i7® processor and DDR3 SDRAM. All necessary analog and timing cables are installed and tested, providing SMA connectivity for all analog I/O lines. The Model 8267 can be configured with 64-bit Windows Professional or Linux operating systems. These features accelerate application code development and provide unhindered access to the high-bandwidth links connecting the Cobalt, Onyx and Flexor analog and digital I/O modules.