Kontron announced two rugged 6U CompactPCI boards with Intel's “Sandy Bridge” processors. Compliant with PICMG 2.16, the air-cooled Kontron CP6003-RA and even more rugged, conduction-cooled Kontron CP6003-RC, support up to 16GB of soldered DDR3 memory, up to 32GB of ruggedized NAND flash memory, and a wide range of I/O from gigabit Ethernet to HDMI.

The CP6003-RA/RC boards are designed primarily for military and aerospace systems, says Kontron. The boards appear to be ruggedized versions of the CP6003SA board announced in March 2011.

Like that board — as well as Kontron's cPCI-6510 Series and CP6002 boards, both of which shipped last summer — the CP6003-RA/RC products adopt the 6U CompactPCI form factor, can be used in a system slot or passively in a peripheral slot, and support Intel Core i7 processors. The difference is that like the CP6003SA, the CP6003-RA/RC moves up to the latest "2nd Generation" Core i7 CPUs, also known as "Sandy Bridge." In addition, they support the newer version 2.16 of the PICMG standard.

CP6003-RA/RC
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The Kontron CP6003-RA/RC boards support the latest Core i7 models up to a quad-core, 2.1GHz Core i7-2715QE processor, says Kontron. The "Sandy Bridge" design enables the CP6003-RA/RC boards to speed up vector operations for imaging and floating-point applications via Advanced Vector Extension (Intel AVX), says the company.

The processors can also process single-threaded tasks through Intel Turbo Boost technology 2.0, enabling a clock speed of up to 3GHz "without the need to oversize the entire system for peak loads," says the company. Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 1.2 is optional, with additional security features available including two redundant firmware hubs for failover, as well as Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) technology.

CP6003-RA/RC block diagram
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The ability to load up to 16GB of soldered DDR3 1333Mhz ECC memory "ensures data accuracy for demanding and safety-critical applications like radar or sonar systems," says Kontron. In addition, the boards support up to 32GB of ruggedized NAND flash memory via a SATA interface, says the company.

The CP6003-RA/RC boards support 64-bit/66 MHz PCI or PCI-x expansion on the hot swap CompactPCI interface, says Kontron. The XMC interface and PMC socket for mezzanine cards offer considerable I/O expansion, as detailed in the I/O chart below.

I/O is said to include gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0, serial, SATA, and video interfaces including DVI/HDMI. Options include a dual 10 gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) Kontron XMC401 network interface card, says the company.

I/O options on CP6003-RA/RC
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The moderately ruggedized CP6003-RA model meets the VITA 47 ruggedization level EAC6, says Kontron. Operating temperatures are said to range from -40 to up to 158 deg. F (-40 to 70 deg. C), depending on the processor. The RA version ships with five SATA ports with RAID 0/1/5/10 functionality, five gigabit Ethernet ports, six USB 2.0 ports, and two RS-232 ports, says the company. Both VGA and dual HDMI ports are also said to be available.

The extremely ruggedized CP6003-RC model, meanwhile, is conduction- instead of air-cooled, and is suitable for integration in completely enclosed systems, says Kontron. The RC model features high mechanical resistance, making it particularly suitable for in-vehicle installations, says the company. The CP6003-RC is qualified to the ECC4 conduction-cooled ruggedization level, and is said to support operating temperatures of up to -40C to 185 deg. F (-40 to 85 deg. C) at the card edge.

Both of the Kontron CP6003-RA/RC 6U CompactPCI boards run Linux, VxWorks, Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows XP Embedded, and Windows Server 2008 R2, says the company. Integrated board support packages (BSPs) are said to support all onboard hardware devices as well as features like hot swap, IPMI, and power and thermal management.

Availability

Samples of the Kontron CP6003-RA/RC are available now, and full production is scheduled for March, says the company. More information, including a data sheet, may be found at Kontron's CP6003-RA/RC product page.

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