Cornet Technology is entering the PCI mezzanine card (PMC) business with two Linux 2.6-compatible expansion cards aimed at military applications. Cornet's CPMC-722 graphics display controller card and CPMC-DSCC high-speed serial communications card are shipping today, says the company.

(Click for larger view of the Cornet CPMC-DSCC serial card)

Founded in 1989, Cornet is a 100-employee Springfield, Virginia based manufacturer of video, voice, and data communication products. It focuses primarily on the defense and infrastructure surveillance markets. Its first PMC cards are primarily intended for military communications applications, it said.

Cornet CPMC-722 graphics display controller
(Click to enlarge)
The CPMC-722 graphics board is based on a Silicon Motions SM722 display controller, and is equipped with 8MB of internal SGRAM, says Cornet. It supports up to 1280 x 1024 24-bit color resolution for both CRT and LCD displays, and offers a dual-display mode. The board is equipped with a 128-bit 2D/3D floating point rendering engine and a motion compensation engine, says the company, enabling full frame MPEG-1/DVD playback. A 200MHz RAMDAC is included to improve refresh on CRTs. The CPMC-722 consumes two Watts of power, and Cornet also offers an extended temperature version.

“CPMC-722 is ideal for real-time battlefield intelligence applications where data is collected, analyzed, and then displayed for quick decision support,” said Manville Chan, who heads up Cornet's Embedded Board Product Marketing group. “It can also be used in military or commercial air traffic control systems to display real-time air traffic data.”

Cornet CPMC-722 graphics controller block diagram
On the left, outputs go to Composite Video, S-Video, and LVDS (TFT/DSTN).
On the right are connections for CRT/VGA (top) and LCD flat panel DVI-I (bottom).
(Click to enlarge)
Cornet's CPMC-DSCC serial board provides up to 10Mbps for synchronous and 2Mbps for asynchronous communication transfers. The board offers a 33MHz, 32-bit PCI interface and includes I/O connectors that support RS-232/V.28 RS-422/V.10, RS-449/V.36, V.35, EIA-530, and EIA-530A protocols. It also supports protocols including HDLC, SDLC, LAPB, LAPD, PPP, ASYNC, and BISYNC. The CPMC-DSCC is equipped with a 17-DWord FIFO per receive channel, an 8-DWord FIFO per transmit channel, and a 128-DWord central FIFO for both transmit and receive. Its Linux device driver supports both asynchronous and synchronous modes.

“CPMC-DSCC is ideal for military communication applications in which a large amount of radar or satellite intelligence data must be transferred from one embedded computing platform to another,” said Chan.

CPMC-DSCC block diagram (front I/O is on the right)
(Click to enlarge)
Availability

Cornet's two PMC boards are available now with Linux 2.6-based drivers, priced at $600 (CPMC-722) and $800 (CPMC-DSCC) respectively. Cornet is offering a 30-day evaluation to qualified prospects for both boards.

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