Applications

Tundra has many products that are used by customers in Medical, Industrial and Military markets. Tundra’s industry leading VME bridges have provided the local to backplane connection for more than a decade. RapidIO® switches, Processor Host Bridges, and PCI bridges are all used here. These product applications require robust, reliable interconnect standards that guarantee data delivery. These are often systems where failure or malfunction could cause injury, loss of equipment, or environmental harm. These are often called Critical Embedded Systems.

Tundra’s products have been used in environments as diverse as smart gasoline pumps, medical imaging, semiconductor processing equipment and embedded computing platforms. In addition to the quality and reliability of our products, the interconnect protocols we employ are designed to ensure reliable transmission of data.

Military Applications often employ the VME Bus (Versatile Modular Eurocard) as the backplane connection due to its deterministic, reliable nature. These application use signal processors, single board computers (or blades), video and graphics cards, I/O cards for sensors, communications cards, and switch cards.

Single Board Computer using VME64

SBC - A basic architecture for a single board computer with high speed PCIx local buses, high speed connection to the VME bus, and a high performance Tsi109™ host bridge. The host bridge also provides connections to Ethernet and provides UARTs, HLP and I2C functionality. The Tsi148™ provides the world’s fastest connection to VME via the 2eSST (two edge source synchronous transactions) protocol which has demonstrated sustained transfer rates of 305Mbytes/sec. The PMC slots provide for upgrades and peripherals as needed.

2eSST - This signaling protocol within the VME standard, uses both edges of the clock and subsequent transactions do not wait for acknowledgment. Tundra has demonstrated sustained transfer rates of 305Mbytes/sec versus traditional VME64 transfer rates of 80 Mbytes/sec. The implementation of this in Tundra’s Tsi148 also provides backwards compatibility. Therefore, the Tsi148 can detect transmission rates with other devices on the VME bus and operate as 2eSST, 2eVME, or VME64.

VXS and VPX Cards

New military applications are making use of serial interconnect technology to increase performance. The VITA VXS (Vita41) and VPX (Vita46) standards allow for a serial bus alongside the VME bus thus providing backwards compatibility for new performance levels.
The use of RapidIO makes a reliable connection between heterogeneous end points, enabling truly distributed computing architectures in critical embedded systems. This switched architecture can be used to build a very reliable connection topology such as dual star. More information is available from the Tundra VXS Webcast Feb 28, 2007. RapidIO has guaranteed delivery of data packets as part of its standard VXS and VPX specifications use a new connector technology to provide an ESD protective path thus allowing field replaceable units.

The application diagram below highlights the implementation of a single board computer (SBC) in one of these new VITA standards. Key features include the potential use of RapidIO as both a local, on-card interconnect between devices and also across the backplane. The 10Gbaud links provide an upgraded path. Tundra’s Tsi35x Bridges provide local PCI bridging, and the Tundra Tsi148 is the right choice for connection to the VME bus from PCI-X because it is the highest performing bridge available. The performance offered allows VME control plane data to keep pace with the increased data plane traffic flowing thru the serial connection. Multiple SBCs or other types of VXS/VPX cards can be connected together using a switch card in the chassis. While the RapidIO bus handles the high speed data, the VMEbus connects the legacy cards.

Radar Processing Cards

Processing data from Forward Looking Infrared Radar (FLIR) airborne radar typically uses Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) to perform range and cross range processing of data. Tundra RapidIO switches can provide a low latency dynamic balance between range & cross range processing in the DSPs to maximize processing power. The processed data is then sent over a higher bandwidth link to the backplane for graphics processing and presentation. Other types of radar like Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) can employ a similar scheme. The same basic hardware architecture can be used to handle frequency domain or filtering applications, thus allowing the maximum reuse of hardware and software.

Radar Processing Architecture using RapidIO

Switch Cards

Switch cards are used within the VXS or VPX enabled chassis to hook together a larger number of RapidIO-enabled cards. This creates a dual star configuration or a full mesh in order to provide redundancy in the event of a hardware failure. The ability to easily configure a system to reach reliability targets is a technical advantage with RapidIO technology.

Industrial Applications

High-end manufacturing and processing equipment utilize VME based products. Industrial applications include the following: semiconductor stepper/imagers, test equipment, oil refineries, automobile plants, and environmental treatment plants. These are applications where reliability is paramount and performance is secondary. In this case the lower speed Universe™ II PCI-to-VME Bridge is the right choice. Below is a typical SBC with Universe II as the bridge to VME from the local PCI bus.

Medical Applications

Real time image processing equipment such as MRIs, PET & CAT scanners and E-beam tomography equipment all utilize the VME bus for its deterministic, reliable nature. New designs are adding a RapidIO connection for DSP aggregation where processing power is important. Below is a typical SBC with Tundra Universe II as the bridge to VME from the local PCI bus.

The application above shows an older 5 volt PCI bus which supports many legacy PCI devices. If the application also does not need to move a lot of data out to the VME bus, then the Universe II is the right choice. If higher performance is required or a 3 volt PCI bus is used, then the Tsi148 is a more appropriate choice.