Date: 21/10/2010

8-core Freescale QorIQ P4080 processor based VPX SBC From GE targets unmanned vehicles

GE Intelligent Platforms has launched the SBC312, a OpenVPX-compliant, 3U VPX single board computer (SBC). The SBC is based on the 8-core Freescale QorIQ P4080 processor and targets demanding space- and weight-constrained environments such as unmanned vehicles. The SBC312 maintains power consumption and heat dissipation at the level of earlier dual core 3U VPX single board computers.

“The SBC312’s support for eight processor cores will allow many legacy applications to be re-implemented in enclosures that are smaller, lighter and more cost-effective, reducing multi-slot configurations to a single slot,” said Rob McKeel, President, Military & Aerospace at GE Intelligent Platforms. “For new applications, it supports the development of very compact, high throughput solutions with optimum performance/watt characteristics.”

The SBC312 is available in five air- and conduction-cooled ruggedization levels for maximum reliability in military/aerospace applications, and is also available in VITA-48 format for 2-level maintenance. It features up to 4 GBytes of dual channel DDR3 memory, and provides significant flexibility, allowing the SBC312 to be configured to precisely meet the demands of a broad range of applications and environments. Two x4 PCI Express Gen2 links are provided, each of which can be configured as four x1 PCI Express links. One link can be optionally configured as 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Two 1000BaseT ports are provided, together with two serial ports, two USB 2.0 ports, two SATA ports and up to eight GPIO ports. A PMC/XMC mezzanine site is also provided to enable application-specific functionality to be added.

The SBC312 will benefit from GE’s broad software roll-out for QorIQ platforms, including GE Intelligent Platforms’ innovative P2P software, which provides PCI Express peer-to-peer connectivity, together with BSPs for VxWorks 6.x; SDKs for Linux (Open Embedded) and Wind River Linux; a full Deployed Test suite; Wind River Hypervisor support; and Integrity from Green Hills Software.

The QorIQ system on chip (SoC) processor family from Freescale Semiconductor implements one or more high-performance e500 Power Architecture cores running at up to 1.5GHz, and is designed with networking applications in mind. QorIQ is an evolutionary step from earlier Power Architecture Freescale processors, allowing upgrade and technology insertion while maximizing customer investment in software, applications and expertise.