General Micro Systems Announces Industry's Fastest Single-Board Computer for Telecom and Defense Applications.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 25, 2004

Hyperthreaded, Dual-Processor CompactPCI SBC Provides Six Video

Channels for Command, Control and Display

General Micro Systems, a leading supplier of VMEbus and CompactPCI board-level products and systems, today announced the CX269, the industry's fastest CompactPCI single-board computer. Featuring a pair of hyperthreaded Pentium IV Xeon processors, the CX269 provides a six-channel video subsystem and utilizes a four-port switched fabric hub to achieve an aggregate I/O bandwidth of more than 10 Gbyte/sec. The CX269 is also available with up to 8 Gbytes of DRAM, three Ethernet ports, eight USB ports, Ultra Wide SCSI 160/320, PMC expansion and two 800-Mbyte/sec FireWire 1394B ports.

"The CX269's unique VRM (Voltage Regulator Module) and thermal design gives the CX269 a unique advantage over all comparable boards," said Ben Sharfi, president of General Micro Systems. "The CX269 not only provides the industry's fastest Pentium IV Processors, it provides the cooling facilities and 100W power budget needed to support even faster processors. This unique feature, along with four independent PCI-X buses, six-channel video, dual FireWire, triple Ethernet, and eight USB channels, give the CX269 unequaled processing, I/O, and video performance."

The CX269's socketable, Xeon-LP processors, part of Intel's Embedded Roadmap (five-year minimum life cycle), deliver a peak performance of 2.6 GHz at 35W, and can be replaced with faster parts (3.0 GHz expected in the near term) as they become available (up to 50W per processor). Both processors employ hyperthreading, which boosts performance by making each processor look like two processors to the Windows XP operating system. The two processors also feature two GByte of on-die L2 cache, a 533-MHz Front Side Bus, and consume 50% less power than their desktop counterparts.

The CX269 combines a four-port switched Hub-Link memory controller with four independent 133-MHz PCI-X buses to eliminate traditional PCI bottlenecks and give the CPUs high-speed access to key memory, mass storage, I/O and networking subsystems. One PCI-X bus provides direct access to the cPSB backplane. The second provides direct access to a SCSI-320 port and two Gigabit Ethernet ports. The third and fourth PCI-X buses provide direct access to high-resolution streaming video, PMC expansion, FireWire, and other high-speed I/O devices. Unlike competitive boards, the CX269's PCI-X buses are nonbridged and operate independently, thereby boosting usable PCI-X bandwidth and enabling the CX269 to support a larger number of high-speed I/O devices.

The CX269 provides three dual-display video ports, which may be used to provide six independent displays, or ganged under Windows-XP or Linux to provide a much larger display with a resolution exceeding 4000 x 3000. Two of the video ports support resolutions of 2048 x 1536 with 24-bit color and DVI-I and RGB outputs. They also support Sync-On-Green, which enables them to utilize defense legacy monitors. The third video port supports dual XVGA (RGB and DVI-D) displays with a resolution of 1600 x 1200.

The CX269 provides two Gigabit Ethernet channels. These channels can be accessed via standard RJ45 jacks or routed to the backplane to support Ethernet Packet Switched Backplane (PICMG 2.16) data transfers. The CX269 also provides a third 10/100 Base-TX Ethernet interface, which is ideal for external debug or control.

The CX269 provides four USB 2.0 ports and two FireWire ports. The 1394-B FireWire ports, which support 800-Mbps data transfer rates (faster than Gigabit Ethernet), allow designers to stream full-motion (30 fps), high-resolution video from cameras, recorders and other video devices. The FireWire ports can also be used to network multiple CX269 boards in a daisy chain. To support custom I/O expansion, the CX269 provides a PMC site, which may be used to mount a single PMC module, or configured with a triple-PMC expansion interface that accepts up to three PMC modules.

The CX269 comes standard with an ultra SCSI-320 interface. It also provides two IDE DMA-100 ports, which can be used to provide a wide range of mass storage options, including an external or onboard 2.5-inch, 100-Gbyte hard drive or an integrated 20-Mbyte flash drive. To support diskless operation, the CX269 also provides 64 Mbytes of Disk-On-Chip flash memory.

The CX269's health monitoring system complies with the PICMG Baseboard Management standard, which defines a standard protocol for managing and reporting key system parameters such as processor temperature, on-board voltages and fan speed. To optimize cooling performance, the CX269 provides separate variable speed control circuits for each of its fans, complete with a separate tachometer 

Software support for the CX269 includes Windows 2000/XP, Solaris-X86, QNX, Vx-Works and Linux.

The CX269 starts at $2400 in single-piece quantity. For more information, contact General Micro Systems Inc. at 8358 Maple Place, Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91730. Phone: [phone]. Fax: [phone]. E-mail: [e-mail]. World Wide Web site: www.gms4sbc.com.