By John Rhea
McLEAN, Va. — A new line of conduction-cooled VMEbus single-board computers from Synergy Microsystems Inc. in San Diego aims at ever-more-powerful digital signal processing (DSP) functions, says Ron Marcus, the company`s marketing director.
Synergy introduced the boards at the COTScon East`99 conference and exposition during May in McLean, Va.
The boards initially feature dual PowerPC 750 processors at speeds ranging from 300 to 466 MHz in a product called the VGR5. Since then Synergy has upgraded to a quad 750 configuration and plans to upgrade further to higher speed 750s as they become available.
Next step, Marcus says, is the AltiVec G4, which includes vector-processing features in combination with the PowerPC 750 for DSP applications. And even beyond that, Marcus anticipates using the new Compaq Alpha microprocessor, when that becomes available toward the end of the year.
Nonetheless, Marcus says he still sees plenty applications for PowerPCs because "they are easier to write code for." The company started with the Motorola 68000 series in 1991 and has steadily upgraded to the PowerPC, as each new version became available. Pricing for the new boards will "be in the teens," Marcus says.
