400-MFLOPS ISA EISA bus DSP board features eight TMS320C44 DSPs.

HIGHLAND PARK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 15, 1995--Ariel Corp. (NASDAQ:NDSP) announced PC-Hydra8, a 400-MFLOPS ISA/EISA plug-in board based on eight TMS320C44 floating point digital signal processors.

Targeting compute- and I/O-intensive applications such as machine vision, medical imaging, SONAR and neural networks, PC-Hydra8 provides up to 32 Mbytes of private SRAM, 12 external 20-Mbyte/sec comm ports and comprehensive parallel processing software support.

It also features a serial interface for connection to dual-channel professional audio, JTAG debug port, ISA/EISA host interface with block transfer capability and 32 kbytes of dual-ported RAM between the host PC and DSPs.

PC-Hydra8's eight DSPs are packaged as four Ariel TIM44-2SG modules, each of which contains two C44 DSPs. The module employs a true Harvard architecture, using two dedicated zero-wait-state SRAM banks to simultaneously feed code and data to each processor's Global and Local memory buses. Each of the module's four memory banks contain up to two Mbytes of SRAM, giving the module a total of up to eight Mbytes of SRAM, and the board's four modules a total of up to 32 Mbytes of private SRAM.

The four TIM44-2SG modules are linked via a shared bus. An extension of each C44's Global memory bus, this shared bus gives the module access to PC-Hydra8's 32 kbytes of dual-ported RAM, which is also accessed by the host PC via the EISA/ISA Bus.

Isolation buffers are used to decouple this shared bus from each module's Global bus in order to prevent shared bus transactions from impeding local C44 program execution.

PC-Hydra8 fully leverages the four 20-Mbyte/sec comm ports on each C44, using some for interDSP and intermodule communications, and others as external I/O ports. Within each TIM44-2SG module, one C44 comm port is used as a dedicated interprocessor link. The remaining three comm ports on each C44 are made externally available, giving the module a total of six external comm ports.

Three of the external comm ports are used for communications with the other three modules. The remaining three ports are brought out to PCHydra8's back plate and headers, giving the board a total of 12 external comm ports.

Development support for PC-Hydra8 includes Ariel's PC-Hydra Parallel Processing Software Development Package (PCH-SDP). The comprehensive package features 3L's Parallel C compiler, which includes standard I/O and debug support, Ariel's Windows-based AXDS-VISTA parallel C4x debugger, Tartan's optimized FASTAR math library and Ariel's DSP Expert Library, which includes more than 200 C-callable math, vector and signal processing functions.

Also available are Texas Instruments' C compiler and XDS510 parallel processing emulator, Ariel's XDS510-compatible PC- and SPARCstation-hosted UXDS emulators, Spectron's SPOX real-time DSP operating system, Tartan's C compilers and Tartan's SigTar, VecTar and FloTar DSP libraries.

PC-Hydra8 is available immediately and costs $15,595 (quantity one). OEM discounts are available.

More on Ariel

Ariel, based in Highland Park, offers the industry's most complete range of advanced OEM digital signal processing hardware and software. The company's board-level products, hardware/software development tools and custom DSP hardware/software are used in a wide range of industrial, commercial, military/government, educational and research applications.

Ariel's board-level DSP products are based on DSP chips from Texas Instruments, AT&T, Analog Devices and Motorola. These products are compatible with a wide range of host computers, including ISA/EISA-compatible systems, PCI Bus Systems, VMEbus systems, SPARCstations and other SBus-compatible systems.

Other products include advanced DSP development tools such as emulators, debuggers, libraries, and extensive third-party software support from companies such as Alta Group, Entropic Research, Hyperception, Eonic Systems, Momentum Data Systems, Signalogic, Spectron Microsystems, Tartan, 3L Ltd and Wind River Systems.

For more information, please contact Ariel Corp. at 433 River Road, Highland Park, N.J. 08904. Phone [phone]. Fax [phone]. E-mail: [e-mail]. Electronic BBS: 908/249-2124.

CONTACT: Ariel Corp., Highland Park

Steve Curtin, 908/249-2900

or

Davis-Marrin

Ken Marrin, 619/573-0736