Advanced Mezzanine Card targets wireless apps

CommAgility Ltd's new AMC-3C87F is a single-width Advanced Mezzanine Card providing a mix of multicore DSP and FPGA processing power together with flexible, high bandwidth I/O connectivity.

The card is targeted for wireless baseband, test and other processing-intensive applications such as WiMAX and Long Term Evolution of 3GPP (LTE). For use in MicroTCA or AdvancedTCA systems, the module includes three Texas Instruments' TCI6487 multicore DSPs running at 1GHz to provide a high-performance DSP resource. It also provides a Xilinx Virtex-5 SX95T FPGA for interfacing and DSP co-processing.

Dual front-panel optical SFP sockets are provided for industry-standard CPRI and OBSAI links to wireless radio heads, units under test or other optical data links such as Ethernet backhaul. Flexible sync options include a GPS or other reference clock, or the optical links themselves.

According to Edward Young, managing director at CommAgility, by working with the company and its software partners, customers can obtain a complete base station WiMAX PHY layer solution based on the new AMC-3C87F module. Alternatively, extensive software and firmware library support, along with available DSP software and FPGA IP cores, provides a fast route for customers to application code porting for both WiMAX and LTE.

In addition to Gigabit Ethernet, the module incorporates a full 10Gbit/s RapidIO infrastructure with an onboard switch from Tundra Semiconductor, providing dependable on and off card interconnects at up to 10Gbps per link.

A range of build options are available and further customization is possible in volume. This ensures the best technical and commercial fit to any customer application, and helps reduce risk and shorten time-to-market. As a customer option, the AMC-3C87F can also be built using TI's recently announced TMS320C6474 processor.

The AMC-3C87F module is sampling to lead customers now.

- Toni McConnel
Embedded.com