Aitech Defense Systems Inc. in Chatsworth, Calif., is introducing a dual-head graphics PCI mezzanine card (PMC) that enables the simultaneous display of two independent graphics streams of high-resolution graphics typically used in harsh-environment applications. The M591 uses the ATI M9 graphics processor with processing capabilities for 2-D and 3-D polygon-generation and texture-mapping acceleration. The M591 PMC unifies video operations in several execution pipelines from different sources with two independent VGA cores and RMADACs to allow flexible data handling and to prevent data bottleneck overloads on specific internal data pathways. The dual DVI outputs of the M591 are capable of independent resolutions as fine as 1600 by 1200 pixels at 75 Hz with 32 bits per pixel and reaches 2048 by 1536 pixels at 85 Hz with data rates as fast as 122 million pixels per second. TV output supports NTSC, PAL, RS170A and CCIR formats in addition to S-video (Y/C) signal formats, interlaced and noninterlaced. To minimize inherently unreliable cabling detrimental to high-reliability applications, video DVI and TV outputs are routed through the PMC’s P4 connector to accommodate rear-panel I/O for the conduction-cooled PMC version. For the air-cooled version, the video I/O is routed via the PMC front panel, which has connectors for each of these signals. The board’s on-chip, 64 MB DDR frame buffer operates at 200 MHz and its software driver package supports all onboard capabilities such as OpenGL, which includes Integrity and VxWorks real-time operating system support, as well as standard VGA and X11. The M591 comes in three ruggedization levels: commercial, rugged, and military, including an air-cooled version per IEEE 1386-2001 and a conduction-cooled version per ANSI/VITA 20-2001. For more information contact Aitech online at www.rugged.com.