XMC card doubles the span of memory lane
ProductJune 01, 2010
Alice Moss
Military Embedded Systems
Chris A. Ciufo
General Micro Systems, Inc.
As the years march on, memory shortcomings become increasingly prevalent in human beings.
As the years march on, memory shortcomings become increasingly prevalent in human beings. But thank goodness that the technologies spawned by the embedded computing industry are just the opposite: As time forges on, technology steps up and provides increasingly more advanced memory capabilities – even up to twice as much. Case in point: Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing’s (CWCEC’s) MM-6171 buffer memory XMC card, which the company reports as having stepped up its game from providing 4G to 8G memory for rugged air- and conduction-cooled mil apps such as image processing, SIGINT, and radar, for example.
Not only that, MM-6171 is designed to render volatile, deep storage capacities, and its two primary advantages and enablers are: 1) High-speed and faster bidirectional bandwidths enabled by serial fabric interfaces such as x4 Serial RapidIO or x4 PCI Express; and 2) Memory connection to high-speed signals via a Virtex-5 LX110T FPGA sitting on the memory card and interfacing to DDR2 of 1 to 2 GB, with 720 bit-wide memory arrays, a data path of 64 bits, and ECC. [Note that the FPGA is used as a memory controller only and is not intended for hosting User Programmable Logic (UPL).] Beyond the FPGA, the MM-6171 additionally sports a full-featured DMA engine, and a VxWorks 6.x device driver is available.
This product was also chosen as an Editor’s Choice product in VME and Critical Systems Spring 2010.
