News & Events : Press Releases : C165

General Micro Systems Announces First Sub-$1000 CompactPCI SBC - C165 'Miser'

• Celeron 850MHz
• 64MB SODIMM RAM
• High Performance Onboard Video
• Dual USB Ports, One PMC Site, 2 Ethernet Ports
• Optional, Onboard 2.5-inch Hard Disk Drive
• Call Factory for Custom Configurations! (25 Piece Minimum)

Rancho Cucamonga, CA.

General Micro Systems, a leading supplier of VMEbus and CompactPCI board-level products and systems, announces the C165, the industry’s first sub-$1000 CompactPCI single-board computer. Featuring a Celeron processor operating at 850MHz, the hot-swappable C165 can operate as a system or peripheral master.

The C165 is equipped with 64MB of SODIMM main memory and 256 kbytes of on-die cache, and features a high-performance AGP video subsystem, two Ethernet ports, dual USB ports, one PMC site, and support for optional onboard 2.5-inch hard drive. This combination of high performance and rich I/O functionality makes the C165 ideal for a wide range of cost-sensitive industrial applications, including telecom/datacom equipment, application-specific server blades, factory automation controllers, embedded medical instrumentation, and military/aerospace control systems.

“Today’s OEMs face extreme cost-reduction pressure to maintain existing accounts and remain competitive in this “Lets Make a Deal” economic environment,” said Randall Sucamele, vice president of sales and marketing for General Micro Systems. “The C165 flattens the cost curve and reduces ramp-up costs, giving OEMs pricing relief without compromising performance or functionality. Now, OEMs can transition to a Pentium III CompactPCI solution without committing to large volumes, gambling when markets will come back, and mortgaging their future.”

The C165’s processing, memory, and I/O subsystems are partitioned to enhance parallelism and maximize overall system throughput. The board’s 850MHz Celeron processor (1GHz optional), equipped with 256 kbytes of on-die L2 cache, uses an Intel 440BX Northbridge to access main memory. The Northbridge also provides two 32-bit PCI local buses. One bus, operating at 33MHz, provides access to local I/O, Ethernet subsystems. The second bus, operating at 66MHz connects to an AGP bus, which drives the high-bandwidth video display subsystem. Both the Pentium III processor and 440BX Northbridge/Southbridge are part of Intel’s Embedded Roadmap, which guarantees a minimum five-year life cycle.

The C165 provides all the I/O, mass storage, and networking capability of a full desktop system. In addition to standard keyboard, mouse, and timer functions, the C165 provides dual USB ports, two serial ports, four Mbytes of BIOS and user flash, and two IDE DMA-33 ports, one of which can be optionally equipped with a 2.5-inch hard drive, the other of which can be used to install an optional 32-Mbyte Disk-On-Chip flash drive onboard. The C165 also provides two 10/100Base-Tx Ethernet controllers. One controller is routed to the front panel. The second controller can optionally support the PICMG 2.16 Ethernet Packet Switched Backplane (cPSB), which provides a standard protocol for backplane communications between multiple boards or chassis.

The C165’s video subsystem is based on Asiliant’s 69030 video controller, which supports standard RGB analog interfaces. The video subsystem supports screen resolutions of up to 1280 x 1024 with 64,000 colors. Moreover, unlike competitive CPU boards, in which the video controller resides the main PCI bus, the C165’s controller resides on a dedicated 66-MHz AGP (Advanced Graphics Port) bus. Through the AGP bus, which is tied to a dedicated PCI local bus port on the Northbridge, the 69030 can access the Pentium III and system memory directly without interference from I/O and networking devices that reside on the Northbridge’s second PCI bus.

Software support for the C165 includes Windows NT/2000/XP, Solaris x86, Linux, QNX and VxWorks.

The C165's standard configuration is: 850MHz Celeron CPU and 64 Mbytes of RAM. For more information on the C165, such as price and availability, please contact General Micro Systems, Inc. at 8358 Maple Place, Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91730. Phone: 1-800-307-4863 or (909) 980-4863. Fax: (909) 987-4863. E-mail: sales@gms4sbc.com. World Wide Web site: www.gms4sbc.com