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cPCI SBC offers embedded alternative to commercial servers

Jul 27, 2011 — by Eric Brown — from the LinuxDevices Archive — 2 views

Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES) announced a 3U CompactPCI single board computer (SBC) powered by a Intel Core i7 processor. The XPedite7332 is equipped with a DVI port and dual gigabit Ethernet ports, as well as USB, serial, SATA, and PCI Express connections, and also features extended temperature and ruggedization support, the company says.

The Xpedite7332 appears to be a slightly cut-down version of the Xpedite7330 SBC announced last November. The Xpedite7332 adds soldered memory and two extra SATA ports via the XMC interface, but it lacks the earlier model's PMC site and associated PCI interface.

In addition, there's no optional plugover module offering front-panel I/O. The previous Xpedite7330 offers front-facing DVI, USB, serial, and SATA ports via the plugover option. Otherwise the two boards appear to be pretty much identical.

In January, we passed on covering another variant of the Xpedite7330 design called the Xpedite7331 (PDF data sheet). The 7331 model offers minimal cPCI interfaces, and no PMC site, but unlike the other two models, offers standard front-panel I/O.

The new Xpedite7332 is designed as a rugged, embedded alternative to commercial servers, says XE-S. Like the 7330 model, the board adopts the CompactPCI (cPCI) format. It also uses the same Intel QM57 chipset and choice of Intel Core i7 dual-core Intel Core i7 processors, namely the i7-610E (2.53GHz), -620LE (2.0GHz), and -620UE (1.06GHz).

XPedite7332
(Click to enlarge)

The SBCs offer identical ruggedization levels and operating system support. Board support packages (BSPs) are available for Linux, VxWorks, QNX Neutrino, and Integrity. Windows drivers are also available, says the company.

The XPedite7332 supports up to 8GB of soldered DDR3 SDRAM, as well as 16GB of NAND flash. The design offers both J1 and J2 cPCI interfaces, with J1 supplying a 32-bit PCI slot, and J2 housing the I/O. The latter includes a DVI port, dual gigabit Ethernet ports, two USB 2.0 ports, two serial ports, and four SATA ports, as well as four GPIO signals, says X-ES.

As noted, there's no PCI bus or associated PMC interface, but there is an XMC interface offering an eight-lane PCI Express (PCIe) port with an XMC interface. Unlike the Xpedite7330, there are also two additional SATA ports available here, bringing the total to six.


XPedite7332 block diagram

(Click to enlarge)

Three levels of ruggedization are available, with different levels of temperature, shock, and vibration resistance. The highest level offers support for operating temperatures of -40 to 185 deg. F (-40 to 85 deg. C), says the company.

Features and specifications listed for the XPedite7332 include:

  • Processor — Intel Core i7-610E (2.53GHz), -620LE (2.0GHz), and -620UE (1.06GHz)
  • Chipset — Intel QM57
  • Memory — up to 8GB DDR3-1066 soldered ECC SDRAM via 2 x 4GB channels
  • Flash storage — up to 16GB NAND flash; 32MB NOR flash
  • J1 cPCI interface:
    • 32-bit PCI interface at 33MHz or 66MHz
    • system controller capable with onboard clocking and arbitration
    • peripheral slot capable
  • J2 cPCI interface:
    • 2 x gigabit Ethernet ports
    • 2 x RS-232/422/485 serial ports
    • 4 x GPIO signals
    • 4 x SATA ports
    • 2 x USB 2.0 ports
    • DVI port
  • XMC site — x8 PCIe port; 2 x SATA 2.0 ports
  • Power requirements — N/A
  • Operating temperature — three levels up to -40 to 185 deg. F (-40 to 85 deg. C); conduction or air-cooled
  • Vibration resistance — up to 0.1 g(2)/Hz max.; 5 to 2000Hz
  • Shock resistance — up to 40 g, 11ms sawtooth

Availability

The XPedite7332 is available now, says X-ES. More information may be found here, as well as in this PDF datasheet, here.


This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.



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