Aitech C102

Introduction

The C102 is a fully loaded Dual/Single PowerPC® 7448, single slot VME SBC specifically designed to endure harsh environment applications. With its distributed architecture, the C102 provides two independent, high performance processing nodes each supported by its own extensive on-board memory resources, communicating with each other over a high speed PCI interconnecting bus. Complementing these powerful processing nodes, the C102 provides the industry's highest functional density feature set of memory and I/O interfaces, which positions the C102 as the best SBC in its class due to the unique combination of processing power and I/O resources.

The C102 is backward compatible with Aitech's previous generation SBCs – the C100/C101/C103 series (the only exception is the IEEE1394 FireWire ports not available) – thus providing an easy migration path for customers using the C10x family SBC products.

Each of the two C102 fully independent processing nodes are powered by Freescale's advanced PowerPC® G4+ MC7448 microprocessor with its integrated on-chip, high speed L1 and L2 caches. The two independent processing nodes employ two separate Discovery III System Controllers. Each processing node includes dedicated memory resources designed to take full advantage of the MC7448 processing power, eliminating bottlenecks in data flow. Memory arrays include large and fast DDR SDRAM memory, Boot Flash for firmware and application storage, User Flash for user application and data storage and NVRAM for user/application specific parameters storage. In addition, the primary processing node includes a high-density Flash File (NAND Flash) for mass storage purposes.

The C102 further expands the unparalleled I/O capabilities provided in the former C10x series boards. Its integrated on-board I/O resources include two Gigabit Ethernet ports, two Fast Ethernet ports, two dual redundant MIL-STD-1553B interfaces, two USB 2.0 ports, one Serial ATA II channel, eight serial ports (six high-speed ports and two standard UARTs) and up to 16 general-purpose discrete I/O channels.

To complement its extensive capabilities and provide extended resources and flexibility, C102 is equipped with two PMC slots allowing installation of additional modules on the board.

The C102 is VME64x compliant, and supports VME advanced protocols such as 2eSST and 2eVME while maintaining full compliance with legacy VME operation.

The C102 SBC internal interconnecting buses are PCI-X/PCI buses split into four segments, with the PCI agents I/O resources distributed between them according to their PCI operation capabilities. This architecture maintains high operation frequency for the high-speed PCI-X/PCI resources while lower capacity PCI resources are located on slower PCI segments. Most of the C102 PCI-X/PCI resources utilize their integrated DMA engines and take full advantage of the PCI-X/PCI protocol in order to achieve maximum bus utilization.

The C102 mechanical and electrical design guarantees its operation over the full range of rugged applications environments and is available both in industry standard conduction- or air-cooled form factors.