Swedish board vendor Recab is shipping the first VME board with PCI Express, it claims. The RVME1200 “Oden” is based on an Intel Pentium M, runs Linux, and features a single sixteen-lane PCI Express connector, supporting up to 8GB/s of throughput (4GB/s in each direction).

(Click for larger view of Recab Oden RVME1200m)

Additionally, Recab claims its Oden board offers the fastest memory access speed available in a VME board. The board supports 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM, and also has a 533MHz FSB (front-side bus) connection between the Intel 915 northbridge and Pentium M processor.

Recab Oden RVME1200 diagram
(Click to enlarge)
Additional touted features include:

• Intel Pentium M up to 2.13GHz
• 533MHz FSB (front-side bus)
• Intel 915 chipset “with 6300ESB”
• x20 PCIexpress links
• VITA 31.1
• VME 2eSST (VME320)
• 3 x gigabit Ethernet interfaces, of which two can be Fiber
• 4 x USB
• SVGA (800 x 600) graphics
• 1 (2) CF slot
• 1 (0) PMC / XMS slot
• Optional disk drive
• RoHS compliant
• Supports Linux, Windows XP, VxWorks

What is VME?

VME (Versa Module Eurocard) is a high-performance, processor-agnostic backplane bus originated in the early 1980s by Motorola, Signetics, Mostek, and Thompson CSF. The bus, which supports up to 80MB/sec bandwidth in 32- and 64-bit versions, has seen widespread use in industrial, commercial, and military applications, according to VITA (VME Industry Trade Association), which currently maintains the “VMEbus” standards.

VITA claims the 25-year-old standard represents the embedded computing industry's most successful bus standard, and that VMEbus “shows no signs of slowing down as it maintains its position as the industry's de facto standard into the 21st century.” VITA published an advanced VME technology roadmap in the fall of 2004.

Availability

The Oden RVME1200 is available now. Pricing was not disclosed.

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