Board family migrates to cPCI systems

Pentek Inc. announced that its Cobalt board family is now available for use in CompactPCI (cPCI) systems. The migration to cPCI allows system designers full access to Pentek's advanced modular technology, which features high-performance signal acquisition and the processing power of Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGAs.

All modules feature dedicated DMA channels and memory buffers for each I/O stream, and multichannel, multiboard synchronization along with a customizable Virtex-6 FPGA for on-board signal processing.

Boards are available as 3U cPCI carriers (73xxx) containing one Cobalt XMC module; 6U cPCI carriers (72xxx) with one XMC installed; and 6U cPCI carriers (74xxx) containing two identical Cobalt XMC modules. Custom configurations mixing XMC module types on a 6U carrier are also possible, yielding single-slot solutions for a wide range of signal acquisition and processing applications.

A bridge chip handles mapping of the Cobalt module's serial PCIe interface to the parallel PCI bus. Developers can utilize the Virtex-6 FPGAs for on-board signal processing that can help reduce data transfer rates across the backplane. Options are also available for providing LVDS to the cPCI J2 (3U cPCI) or J3 and J5 (6U cPCI) connectors for application-specific custom I/O.

All software and FPGA development tools for the Cobalt family are immediately available to support cPCI designs. Pentek's ReadyFlow Board Support Libraries include drivers for Linux, Windows and VxWorks operating systems, as well as turnkey application software that provides out-of-the-box modules.

Pentek's GateFlow FPGA Design Kit allows users to incorporate custom algorithms connected to the pre-configured interface functions installed on the Virtex-6 FPGA. GateFlow enables customers to implement high-performance signal processing functions for wideband communications, radar, signal intelligence and beamforming.

Pentek's Cobalt cPCI family is immediately available starting at $11,600 with 8 weeks ARO.