SVME/DMV-181 Sentinel Power PC

Dy 4 Systems has introduced a new PowerPC 7410-based SBC featuring 500MHz operation, dual Ethernet capability, six serial ports, 1Gbyte of main memory with ECC for high integrity, 2Mbytes of L2 cache and two USB ports. Known as the SVME/DMV-181 Sentinel, this new SBC offers a host of features that make it ideal for use in embedded computing applications found in avionics, tactical ground vehicles and rugged naval systems.

The SVME/DMV-181 Sentinel supports two independent 10/100Mbit Ethernet ports for redundancy and survivability in a networked system environment. Survivability in harsh environments, particularly in extremes of temperature, was a key factor in the design of the Sentinel. Its unique "TherMax" thermal management system is designed for optimal support of conduction cooling. Heat is dissipated away from its two PMC sites with great efficiency, allowing two high functionality PMCs to be fitted and able to operate a full 10 deg. C cooler than equivalent designs today. The Sentinel is designed to operate from -40 to +85 deg. C, fully populated with PMC mezannine modules.

The Sentinel is fully supported by Dy 4's Foundation Firmware (FFW) plus LynuxWorks' LynxOS and Wind River Systems' VxWorks/Tornado. VxWorks is comprehensively supported with a BSP and driver suite, setting new industry standards by providing drivers for all the additional functionality incorporated into the Sentinel. In addition, Dy 4 offers the IXLibs-AV DSP math library so that the full performance potential of the AltiVec enhancements of the 7410 can be exploited.

Unique to the Sentinel is the use of the Galileo Discovery bridge chip. This new device offers dramatic improvements over previous generations, by providing two independent 64bit PCI buses, 800Mbytes/sec. main memory bandwidth, Ethernet, 4 DMA controllers and two additional serial interfaces. The bridge also supports up to 96Mbytes of 64 bit wide directly addressable Flash. For many safety-critical avionics applications it is an essential requirement to immediately and directly execute application code on start-up.

The Sentinel provides this capability from Flash, plus it has an additional 32Kbytes of autostore NOVRAM that can be used to save time-sensitive application data in the event of a power failure.

The Sentinel supports six serial ports, two USB ports and a unique16 bit discrete I/O port. The I/O port can be configured so that each bit can be designated as input or output, can be single-ended or differential RS-422 and, for maximum flexibility, can be programmed to generate an interrupt on change-of-state on any input bits. In many system configurations this can save one full backplane slot where it might be necessary to read status bits or drive control bits of external equipment or to cause an interrupt based on external events.

As with all Dy 4 products, the SVME/DMV-181 Sentinel fully supports Dy 4's planned approach to lifecycle management by providing a form, fit, function superset of the popular, previous-generation SVME/DMV-179 PowerPC SBC.