Home > What's New > Upper Saddle River, NJ - May 23, 2011

Pentek Brings Power of Cobalt Virtex-6 Family to CompactPCI System Designs

A/D and D/A rates from 10 MHz to 1 GHz On-board Virtex-6 FPGAs for custom signal processing 3U and 6U form factors with up to two Cobalt modules installed

Pentek, Inc., today announced that its highly popular Cobalt® series boards are now available for use in CompactPCI (cPCI) systems. The migration to cPCI gives system designers full access to Pentek's advanced modular technology, which features high-performance signal acquisition and the processing power of Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGAs.

"With the adaptation of our Cobalt modules to CompactPCI," said Pentek vice president Rodger Hosking, "we have rounded out the family to serve all popular embedded system standards. Developers who need to insert the latest A/D, D/A and FPGA technology in existing cPCI systems will find this a cost-effective way to upgrade, because it preserves the rest of the system."

Cobalt family capabilities now available for cPCI systems include:

• 1 GHz A/D & 1 GHz D/A (Model xx630)
• 2 Channel 500 MHz A/D, DUC & 2 Channel 800 MHz D/A (Model xx650)
• 3 Channel 200 MHz A/D, DUC & 2 Channel 800 MHz D/A (Model xx620)
• 3 Channel 200 MHz A/D, DDC, DUC & 2 Channel 800 MHz D/A (Model xx621)
• 4 Channel 200 MHz 16-bit A/D (Model xx660)
• 4 Channel 200 MHz A/D & Quad DDCs with Beamforming IP (Model xx661)
• L-Band RF (925-2175 MHz) Tuner with 2 Channel 200 MHz A/D (Model xx690)

All modules feature dedicated DMA channels and memory buffers for each I/O stream and multichannel, multiboard synchronization along with a customizable Virtex-6 FPGA for on-board signal processing.

Boards are available as 3U cPCI carriers (73xxx) containing one Cobalt XMC module, 6U cPCI carriers (72xxx) with one XMC installed and 6U cPCI carriers (74xxx) containing two identical Cobalt XMC modules. Custom configurations mixing XMC module types on a 6U carrier are also possible, yielding single-slot solutions for a wide range of signal acquisition and processing applications.

A bridge chip handles mapping of the Cobalt module's serial PCIe interface to the parallel PCI bus. Developers can utilize the Virtex-6 FPGAs for ob-board signal processing that can help reduce data transfer rates across the backplane. Options are also available for providing LVDS to the cPCI J2 (3U cPCI) or J3 and J5 (6U cPCI) connectors for application specific custom I/O.

Full Software Development Support

All software and FPGA development tools for the Cobalt family are immediately available to support cPCI designs. Pentek's ReadyFlow® Board Support Libraries include drivers for Linux, Windows, and VxWorks as well as turnkey application software that make modules useable out-of-the-box.

Pentek's GateFlow® FPGA Design Kit allows users to incorporate custom algorithms connected to the pre-configured interface functions installed the Virtex-6 FPGA. GateFlow enables customers to implement high-performance signal processing functions for wideband communications, radar, signal intelligence, and beamforming.

Photos and Attachments

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