CHATSWORTH, Calif., 23 Dec. 2006. Aitech Defense Systems Inc., an independent manufacturer of board and subsystem level products for harsh environment defense, aerospace, and astronautics applications, has expanded its C900 series of rugged 3U CompactPCI (cPCI) single-board computers (SBCs) with the new low-power, high-performance C903, available in both rugged air- or conduction-cooled versions.
Powered by a 750FL PowerPC operating at 600MHz, the new C903 is well suited to such applications as low power process controllers, actuator/axis control, communication bridges and protocol converters, antenna position controllers, and remotely piloted ground and airborne vehicles. Fire control processing, platform stabilization, and mission control subsystems also benefit from the C903's functionality.
The rugged C903 provides high reliability over the industry's widest standard operating temperature ranges of from -55 degrees C to +85 degrees C.
Generating all specialty power onboard, the thermally managed C903 self-monitors its temperature and power dissipation through integral temperature sensors that provide performance monitoring and increased MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) reliability in the harshest of applications.
The large onboard memory arrays provide volatile, non-volatile, and mass memory resources. The C903 features up to 1GB of DDR SDRAM (with ECC protection) in addition to 128MB of standalone User Flash. The board also incorporates 64MB of dedicated Boot Flash and up to 2GB of NAND Flash File memory for mass storage, with an added 128KB of NVRAM for applications needing to quickly store critical variables, such as relative spatial or absolute position.
It uses the Marvell MV64460 Discovery III system controller featuring two separate and independent PCI-X bus interfaces and dual Gigabit Ethernet interfaces. The board can function as either the cPCI system controller or as a peripheral board. As the system controller, the C903 supports up to seven additional cards on the backplane, expanding the SBC's functionality to include clock, arbitration, and interrupt capabilities.
The board's four 32-bit timers provide high-resolution timing functionality, as well as chaining for long interval counting applications. Its real-time clock (RTC) is backed up by a large SuperCap capacitor rather than unreliable batteries for long-term data storage and accurate timekeeping. Fixed, programmable and windowed avionics watchdog timers work in tandem to identify time-out events, such as a hung system or the improper execution of a coding sequence.
The C903 also offers two independent Gigabit Ethernet ports, two high-speed serial communications ports, two USB 2.0 ports, and up to eight general-purpose discrete I/O channels. An industry-standard PMC slot enables expanded I/O functionality through user-defined modules added to the board.
In addition to the JTAG/COP interface for debugging and development purposes, the board comes with test and diagnostic firmware that includes boot software, an AIMon monitor/debugger tool, an AIDiag diagnostic tool and BIT. Board support packages (BSPs) with drivers for all onboard resources are readily available for WindRiver VxWorks and Green Hills Integrity.
The C903 air-cooled and conduction-cooled versions adhere to PICMG 2.0 R3.0 and ANSI/VITA 30.1-1991 specifications, respectively. The custom metal thermal/heat management frame of the conduction-cooled board provides integral heat dissipation as well as rigidity and shock resistance.
OEM quantity pricing for the C903 starts at $3790. Delivery is from stock.
