Mar 31 2010
An Actel company Pigeon Point Systems (PPS) has introduced its novel Management Controller (MMC) Board Management Reference (BMR) Starter Kit.
The MMC Board Management Reference Starter Kit
The device is based on the SmartFusion intelligent mixed signal FPGA technology of Actel, which is a device that integrates a programmable analog and a hard ARM Cortex-M3-based microcontroller subsystem (MSS). The new kit is ideal for the MMCs in AdvancedMC (AMC) modules that are utilized in both MicroTCA (uTCA) shelves and AdvancedTCA (ATCA) carriers, together known as xTCA.
Combining responsive support, interoperability and compliance of Pigeon Point Systems with the intelligent mixed-signal capabilities of the new kit increases customer design cycles and also facilitate designers to focus on distinguishing their AMC module solutions.
The new product is a complete firmware and hardware solution with proper support and documentation. Pigeon Point Systems has a rich success history in applications involving hardware platform management with telecommunications equipment manufacturers.
Some of the SmartFusion features meant for xTCA management controllers include customizability attributed to the in-built flash FPGA that can incorporate board-specific logic onto the SmartFusion chip, thereby decreasing cost and footprint; a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 core for higher processor performance; zero load advanced analog processing on the ARM processor for performing xTCA-aware analog sensor monitoring; and configured and processed xTCA-oriented analog sensors as well as other analog sensors.
The kit includes a benchtop management controller development board, which is executed in an AMC form factor. The kit also has an entire SmartFusion FPGA design in a Libero IDE project. The kit comes in two variants: one for ATCA-focused bench top context customers and the second for uTCA-focused bench top context customers.