KANATA, Ontario, Can., September 10, 2003. Dy 4 Systems, a business unit of Force Computers, a Solectron company, has introduced the CHAMP-AV III quad MPC7447 PowerPC DSP board. The AltiVec-based CHAMP-AV III features the QuadFlow architecture first introduced on the highly successful CHAMP-AV II.

With Gigahertz processing and high-bandwidth sub-systems, the CHAMP-AV III maintains Dy 4's position as provider of the fastest DSP board for military and aerospace signal processing applications.

The CHAMP-AV III, Dy 4's third-generation PowerPC DSP board, provides applications with 32 GFLOPs peak computational power. Based on the latest PowerPC from Motorola, each of the four processing nodes consists of a 1 GHz 7447 processor, 256MB DDR-250 SDRAM (2GB/sec) and dual 100 MHz 64-bit PCI-X interfaces. Within the first six months of 2004, a version will be offered with 512MB of DDR SDRAM per node (Total of 2GB). The QuadFlow architecture supports four simultaneous node-to-node transfers, resulting in a total data flow of 3.2GB/sec peak. Each node can transfer to adjacent nodes at up to 1.6GB/sec peak. The additional bandwidth capacity provided by Dy 4's QuadFlow architecture gives users increased multi-processing application performance.

"The CHAMP-AV III embodies Dy 4's vision to build hardware platforms that simplify software development," said Robert J. Hoyecki, Dy 4 DSP product manager. "The QuadFlow architecture is faster and less restrictive, enabling software developers to focus on algorithms rather than wrestling with architecture limitations. Dy 4 is offering its Inter-Processor Communications (IPC) library for use with the AV III. IPC-based applications developed on the AV II (with or without StarFabric interconnect) will easily port to the AV III, thus providing customers with a seamless upgrade solution."

The CHAMP-AV III has two PMC sites that support the latest PCI-X interface specification, offering 64-bit/100MHz operation, while retaining compatibility with legacy 33MHz and 66MHz PMC modules. With a total 1.6 Gbyte/sec peak of I/O bandwidth, the AV III has throughput to match the power of the quad 7447s.

Both PMC sites support Low Voltage Differential Signaling (LVDS) to the backplane connectors, supporting the use of high-speed serial switched interconnect technologies such as Dy 4's StarFabric-based StarLink PMC and Fibre-channel PMC-643 modules. Supporting high-speed connections to the backplane allows customers to avoid the use of front-panel wiring harnesses, resulting in improved system maintainability.

For connection to command and control networks, the CHAMP-AV III is equipped with two Ethernet interfaces, one supporting Gigabit Ethernet and the other supporting 100BaseT operation.

Operating system support is available for Wind River VxWorks/Tornado, and planned for Green Hills INTEGRITY and Timesys Linux. The Dy 4 software products also include a run-time library supporting applications compiled to operate without any RTOS. Dy 4's proven IXLIBS-AV DSP function library has been ported to the 7447 family of processors.

The CHAMP-AV III comes in a range of air-cooled and conduction-cooled configurations and is available in a dual processor version. Pricing for the CHAMP-AV III starts at $14,995.

Detailed information may be found by visiting www.dy4.com

Military & Aerospace Electronics