General Micro Systems Releases Industry's Fastest Single-Chip VME64/PCI Bridge; 10x Faster Than Nearest Competitor.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

BUS & BOARDS SHOW

Booth No. 15

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 8, 2001

General Micro Systems today announced the availability of OmniVME, the industry's fastest VMEbus-to-PCI bridge, and the only chip to implement the full VME 2eSST/VME320 protocols.

Fully compliant with the VITA (VMEbus Interface Trade Association) specifications, OmniVME supports VMEbus transfer rates of over 533 Mbytes/sec. That's more than 10 times faster than Omni-VME's closest competitor, Tundra's Universe II.

"VMEbus has always enjoyed a substantial advantage over CompactPCI in applications like telecommunications that require a large number of slots, advanced multiprocessing capability, and sophisticated interrupt control facilities," said Ben Sharfi, president of GMS. "But reduced throughput and high cost have been obstacles. OmniVME obliterates those obstacles and breathes new life into VMEbus, providing a ten-fold increase in VMEbus transfer rates, alleviating PCI-to-VME bottlenecks, and providing a high level of integration that makes it possible to manufacture VMEbus boards that are on a price par with CompactPCI boards."

OmniVME is a VME-to-PCI bridge device that provides an interface between a VMEbus (or VME320) backplane and a local on-card PCI bus. OmniVME supports 16-, 32-, and 64-bit VMEbus transfers and can act as a master or slave with full Slot One system control functionality.

It also supports 2eSST signaling (transfers data on both edges of each VMEbus clock), which enables it to move data over a 21-slot VME320 backplane at a sustained data rate of 1 Giga byte/sec. That's more than 10 times faster than the 80 Mbyte/sec theoretical maximum supported by VME64 and 10-20 times faster than the 20-30 Mbyte/sec data rate supported by Tundra's Universe II device. Moreover, these high-speed data transfers can occur concurrent with standard 16-, 32-, and 64-bit transfers, thereby enabling high-speed VME320 cards to coexist with legacy VMEbus cards on the same backplane.

On the PCI local bus side, the Omni-VME bridge supports standard 32- and 64-bit PCI transfers at 33 MHz, giving it a peak performance of 266 Mbyte/sec. GMS also supports 66-MHz PCI signaling, thereby enabling Omni-VME to support 64-bit/66Mhz PCI local bus (PCI 2.2) and PCI-to-VMEbus transfers of up to 533 Mbytes/sec. Thus, the only speed limitation is the CPU host local PCI bus, not the VMEbus!

To handle speed differences between the VMEbus and PCI bus, and to enable the two buses to operate independently at full speed, OmniVME provides a prefetch FIFO (32 words deep by 64 bits wide) with integrated byte swapping logic. The FIFO automatically reconfigures the data path for each transaction (i.e., 16-, 32, or 64-bit, and 64-bit 2eVME). It also converts between VMEbus big Endian format and PCI little Endian format on the fly.

To enhance message-passing performance and to maximize PCI throughput for multiprocessing applications, OmniVME provides a four door-bell interrupts and mail box interrupts for multi processing applications along with DMA support for 16, 32, 64-bit and 64-bit 2eVME modes.

The OmniVME, packaged in a 672 pin Ball Grid Array (BGA), measures only 1.054" X 1.054" X .060." This is about half the size of the Universe II, allowing an easy adoption of the OmniVME in place of the Universe II. Samples are available in early Q1 2001 and production availability slated for Q1 2001.

To simplify system integration, OmniVME comes with full driver support for Windows NT/2000, VxWorks, and Linux. Tundra's Universe II, by contrast, is available with only sample driver. As a result, OEMs using NT, VxWorks, and Linux must perform their own ports.

For more information on OmniVME, please contact General Micro Systems at 8358 Maple Place, Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91730. Phone: [phone]. FAX: [phone]. Email: [e-mail]. World Wide Web site: www.general-micro-systems.com.

More on General Micro Systems

Since its founding in 1979, General Micro Systems (GMS) has been a leading supplier of high-performance, embedded single-board computers for applications ranging from aerospace and defense, to imaging and telecommunications, and industrial control. Today, GMS offers a broad range of highly integrated VMEbus and CompactPCI single-board computers based on high-performance microprocessors such as the Pentium II, 68K, PowerPC, ColdFIRE, and SPARC. The company also supports a variety of popular operating systems, including Windows NT, Solaris, VxWorks, and QNX.