Index Dedicated Systems Magazine 00q3 on BUS TECHNOLOGY

Index Dedicated Systems Magazine 00q3

Editorial
By Martin Timmerman, Chief-Editor of Dedicated Systems Magazine, Dedicated Systems Experts.
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 3
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INTER CONNECTS

Is Fibre Channel robust enough?
Fibre Channel communication at 1Gbit/second over screened twisted pair is very impressive and
appears to offer the system designer the opportunity of high bandwidth over a cheap transport medium.
But is this true, especially in ruggedized environments? Have the cables become so specialized and highly tuned to their application that the technology cannot be economically implemented in the hostile environments found in military vehicles?

By John Giles Product Manager Network & Communications Group, Radstone Technology.
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 6
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Advanced DSP Architectures using ANSI Standard Interconnects; FPDP, Serial FPDP, Raceway, and Fibre Channel
Today's advanced Digital Signal Processing (DSP) Systems must handle very high data rates in an efficient and cost effective manner. System architectures for data acquisition, data movement, data processing, and data storage have evolved from specially designed, proprietary interconnects to the use of industry standards. There now exists a rich set of ANSI standard interconnect technologies that allow the integration of cost effective, high bandwidth, advanced DSP systems. This paper presents a typical architecture for advanced DSP systems and provides a technical overview of four standard interconnect technologies to include: RACEway, FPDP, Serial FPDP, and Fibre Channel. It then provides specific examples of how these standards technologies can be deployed in systems to fulfill the cost effective, high throughput, interconnect requirements of advanced radar, sonar, medical and other DSP applications.

By Tom Bohman, VP Business Development, VMETRO, Inc.
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 10
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MEZZANINES

Reliable at all times CompactPCI system controls chip production
The production of semiconductor chips is an extremely complex process requiring highest precision. Standard CompactPCI cards and M-Modules from MEN perform this task with highest reliability in systems made BPS (Balzers Process Systems) a market leader in this industry. The high vacuum evaporation systems from Balzers (BPS) are used all over the world at the fabrication sites (fabs) of the semiconductor manufacturers.

By Hermann Strass, Consultant for new technologies, MEN.
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 17
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Cost-effective, practical, EMC-shielded a refined front-end solution for PC-MIP
The trendsetter in mezzanine technology is PC-MIP. These mini PCI cards require less space and provide higher packaging densities than conventional solutions. But that's not all: PC-MIP also offers a unique front-end concept that is simple and therefore cost-effective, attractively styled and simultaneously provides comprehensive EMC shielding. Schroff, part of the Pentair Enclosures Group Europe, has been intensively involved in developing the relevant specification and is now one of the first manufacturers to provide suitable components for the PC-MIP front-end area.

By Keith Reynolds, Marketing Manager, Schroff UK Ltd.
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 20
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PCI Telecom Mezzanine Card (PTMC) Extending PMC to Support Standard Telecom and Telephony Interfaces
The popular PCI Mezzanine Card (PMC) specification lacked telecommunications extensions. The standards bodies and engineers now have addressed this need by developing the PCI Telecom Mezzanine Card. PTMC will not replace PMC, but will enhance it as an extension of the PMC specification.
This makes PTMC ideally suited to provide telecom and telephony functionality - which was unavailable under the existing PMC spec.

By Ed Bizari, Product Manager - Access Products, Performance Technologies, Inc.
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 24
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Processor PMC (PPMC), Taking Mezzanines to New Heights
This article discusses the benefits of PPMC that stands for Processor PMC. By moving the processing component to the mezzanine level, users have a complete processor/memory subsystem that is flexible and easy to upgrade. Base boards do not have to be swapped each time a processor enhancement is made. The cost and resource savings are obvious.

By Jeff Durst , Marketing Project Manager, Artesyn Communication Products, Inc.
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 26
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VIM Mezzanine Boosts VME Bandwidth
Few mezzanine designs have evolved into true industry standards. Unfortunately, the most popular standard mezzanine busses still fall far short of meeting the needs of recently-introduced DSP and RISC processors. In trying to close this I/O gap, Pentek has developed the VIM (Velocity Interface Mezzanine) architecture, a new, high-performance mezzanine bus delivering extremely high-speed data transfers suitable for a variety of processors and board formats.

By Rodger H. Hosking, Vice President and Co-founder, Pentek.
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 28
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VME

Design of an Asynchronous VME bus Controller for Heterogeneous systems
We describe the design of an asynchronous VME bus controller to be used with heterogeneous systems. This controller allows to VME bus based systems to communicate with the most known standard mediums and to resolve access conflict problems whenever there is a shared medium contention. Such a medium can be the parallel PCI bus, the serial SCSI bus, the DRAM, the DMA, the 4-phase protocol, and the FIFO protocol. Starting from the HDL descriptions of the VME bus and the communication medium's protocols, we generate a purely behavioural HDL description of the controller. After being generated, the latter description is transformed into an asynchronous synthesis model called extended-burst-mode machine to be implemented by commercial synthesis tools. This design was simulated correctly with respect to all of the applicable test vectors and implemented by using a 0.6µm CMOS standard cell technology.

By Abdelkrim Zitouni, Mohamed Abid and Rached Tourki, Laboratory of Electronics and Micro-Electronics, Faculty of Sciences of Monastir.
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 34
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PPzero - Multiprocessing PCI over the VMEbus P0 connector
This article reviews existing "first generation" VME/PCI expansion techniques and considers the limitations which prevent peer multiprocessing. PPzero a new VME/PCI architectural concept from Radstone which provides a genuine multiprocessing PCI upgrade capability will then be introduced. Crucially this implementation of PCI through the VMEbus P0 connector represents a logical development and an upgrade path for existing boards and systems. The technology provides a second system data path which has the additional benefit of providing access to state of the art PCI/PMC innovations.

By Colin Davies, Product Manager Systems Business Unit, Radstone Technology.
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 40
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CPCI

CompactPCI Poised To Meet High Performance Telecom Demands
PC-based applications like computer telephony integration are ideally suited to take advantage of the plug and play benefits of CompactPCI, allowing designers to use the wide range of low-cost, off-the-shelf peripherals and application software that has been developed for the desktop PC market.
Moreover, new definitions to the CompactPCI specification and enhancements of complementary subbuses, such as PMC (PCI Mezzanine Card), H.110, and ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) are playing a critical role in positioning CompactPCI as the leading bus architecture in the telecom market.

By Todd Wynia, Vice President of Marketing, Artesyn Communication Products.
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 48
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Bringing home the bandwidth: using CompactPCI for high bandwidth telephony applications

By Lynn Brielmaier, Application Engineer, Communication Platforms Division, RadiSys Corp.
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 50
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Red-hot laptop technology in overalls
This article explains that with the simultaneous availability of mobile Pentium III technology on laptops and on CompactPCI, the latest processors are no longer reserved just for office communications, but can now also be used for high performance, industrial computer platforms providing more productivity, precision and speed. The author claims that it is a safe bet that with CompactPCI, other technologies such as "high availability" will in future penetrate our working routine to take over the automation environment for whole generations of machines.

By Wolfgang Eisenbarth, Project Manager Communication, PEP Modular Computers.
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 53
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PXI/CompactPCI in Embedded Measurement and Control Applications
The PXI specification extends CompactPCI for measurement, instrumentation and automation systems.
This framework lends itself perfectly for implementing real-time control solutions using the PXI hardware architecture along with LabVIEW RT software. This article deals with the PXI architecture, and how embedded and real-time measurement and control applications can be implemented using PXI.

By Chandran Nair, VXI/PXI Product Manager, National Instruments.
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 56
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PROTOCOL

Protocol design: you get what you put A penny's worth of advice and a Java generic Protocol class
When designing anything from embedded systems to client/server based systems or GUI APIs you have to know the protocols involved. Programs communicating with each other must do this on a mutually agreed basis. This article tries to sum up experience from protocol design in typical embedded environments. You may never be able to repair a failed design after it has been shipped, so you'd better do it right from the start.

By Øyvind Teig, Senior Development engineer division Autronica, Navia Maritime AS.
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 60
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HOTSWAP

Adding Hot Swap Capabilities with "GO Hot Swap"
Three main reasons make the CompactPCI attractive for industrial application such as high speed
telecomm and datacomm systems. One of these reasons is the "Hot Swap" feature supported by the CompactPCI hardware specifications. This specification makes it possible to insert or remove circuit boards to or from a running system without causing damage to the other boards or crashing the system software, thus enabling the system to be up and running while hardware is being replaced, maintained or upgraded.

By Chris Stephens, Managing Director, Computer Solutions Ltd., UK distributor for Jungo Ltd.
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 66
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OTHERS

Company Directory
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 70

Bookreview
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 73

Bookstores
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 74

Dedicated Systems Gazette
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 75

Dedicated Systems Virtual Pressroom
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 76

Subscription Form
BUS TECHNOLOGY - 00q3 - p. 81