Vmetro’s latest COTS DSP card integrates a Freescale MPC8641D processor, two Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs and a VXS-based high-speed serial inter-connect fabric.

The board, called the Phoenix VPF2, can be used for high-bandwidth pre-processing and back-end processing in applications such as real-time video processing, surveillance and radar.

It is based on the VXS (VITA 41) standard, an evolution of the VME64 specification, which supports eight serial communications channels through its alternative P0 connector. Implemented on the VPF2, this allows for aggregate data rates in excess of 2Gbyte/s.

The MPC8641D dual-core processor runs up to 1.25GHz with 2Gbyte of memory to support operating systems such as VxWorks and Linux. Integrated within the MPC8641D processor is a complete I/O sub-system, including two Gigabit Ethernet ports, serial I/O, dual DDR/DDR2 memory controllers, VME interface and independent x8 PCI Express links to the Xilinx FPGAs and the XMC/PMC site. The VPF2 has Ethernet options which support both RJ45 and optical interfaces or backplane I/O.

Closely coupled to the MPC8641D processor are two Xilinx Virtex-5 SX95T FPGAs, optimized for DSP performance, or LX110T FPGAs, optimized for high-performance logic. With their on-chip serial transceivers, either of the Virtex-5 FPGA options provide high bandwidth off-board serial communications channels to processing and I/O sub-systems.

The data bandwidth of the FPGAs means that the board can be used for pixel-rate computation, digital down conversion, FFTs, filters and encryption.