VMETRO ships industry first quad processing card for VITA-41/VXS & announces new software development.

VMETRO, a provider of embedded, real-time boards and sub-systems based on open standards like VME, PCI, cPCI and RACEway, today announced that the Phoenix VPF1, a quad signal processing card for VME-based systems supporting the VITA-41/VXS standard, has begun delivery to customers. The VPF1, part of the Phoenix family of VXS products, is a high-performance processing engine and is available in standard and rugged configurations.

Unlike more traditional solutions the VPF1 provides both dual independent PowerPC processors and dual independent Virtex-II Pro FPGAs for processing; as well as two 4x high-speed serial links for VITA 41 VXS (VMEBus Switched Serial) standard fabric connectivity. This combination of processors, FPGAs and communications fabric provides scalable high-density processing and efficient data communications in one card. In addition, because the board supports VXS, it is perfect for demanding applications that require complex signal processing with closely coupled high bandwidth data I/O.

The VXS Switched Serial Standard is a new initiative designed to advance VME technology while continuing to support legacy VME/VME64 products. The principal capability offered by VXS is the ability to utilize switched fabrics (such as PCI Express or Serial RapidIO) across the backplane thus providing a significant increase in board to board transfer performance as well as the ability to handle multiple, simultaneous, high-bandwidth data streams completely independent of the conventional VME backplane. This is particularly important as it allows applications to effectively utilize processing resources distributed across multiple boards without the need for proprietary hardware.

"VXS provides a standard mechanism for high-performance, low-latency, board-to-board communications," said Andy Stevens, VMETRO Vice President of Business Development for Processing Solutions. "It is perfect for those designers requiring efficient and scalable multiprocessing, but who do not want to be locked in to proprietary systems."

Also announced today was the development of TransComm, a software solution for VXS-based inter-processor communications designed to ease the programming burden associated with building high-performance multiprocessor applications. TransComm consists of a library of optimized routines that enable prioritized data movement and message passing between tasks, where the tasks may reside on any processor, board or set of boards connected via VXS switched fabrics. Engineers developing applications for VPF1 will find TransComm a useful tool for synchronizing the execution of tasks across multiple processors.

"As VXS processing solutions come to market, the software to effectively make use of them becomes more and more important," said Eric Gulliksen, Director of Embedded Hardware and Systems Practice at Venture Development Corporation. "I applaud VMETRO for their initiative."

TransComm is scheduled for delivery in the second half of 2005 and will be initially available on the VPF1 quad processor card.