News & Events : Press Releases : V169 FPIO 3R "Powerhouse-II"

May 16-17, 2005
MEECC Long Beach

Rancho Cucamonga, CA

General Micro Systems today announced the V169-FPIO, the first full-featured, high-performance, Pentium-based VME-64 single-board computer to offer front panel I/O access. Featuring a Pentium M processor operating at speeds of up to 2 GHz, and consuming just 18W, the V169-FPIO provides a high-speed, low-power upgrade path for legacy SPARC- and PowerPC-based mil/aero and industrial control systems.

The V169 features two Mbytes of L2 cache, four Gbytes of RAM, and a wealth of standard high-speed I/O, networking, graphics and mass storage options. Among these are dual Gigabit Ethernet, dual Ultra SCSI-320 ports, two high-resolution video displays, four USB ports, and PS2 Keyboard/Mouse interfaces, all accessible via the front panel. The V169 also features three Independent 64-bit 100MHz PMC expansion sites, which are ideal for adding custom I/O options.

“The V169 makes it easy for mil/aero and industrial control OEMs to refresh their legacy VMEbus systems with the most advanced processor, memory, and I/O technology without performing forklift upgrades, beefing up the cooling system and replacing the fan trays,” said Ben Sharfi, president of General Micro Systems. “With the V169, OEMs get the industry’s fastest, lowest power embedded processor, a ton of memory, high-performance 2D/3D graphics, and a boat load of I/O, all accessible via the front panel.”

“The Pentium M is still the best kept secret in the embedded industry,” added Sharfi. “When most people think embedded, they think PowerPC. But the plain fact is that the Pentium M is hands down the best embedded processor. Not only is it 20% faster than the PPC7447 for both integer and floating point operations, it consumes 20% less power and comes with Intel’s anti-obsolescence Embedded Roadmap guarantee.”

The V169 offers a range of Pentium M processor options. For applications with the most stringent power constraints, the V169 is available with the Low Voltage (LV) Pentium M-738 CPU. Equipped with two Mbytes of on-die cache, the M-738 operates at speeds of up to 1.4 GHz while consuming just 10W maximum. For applications with the most demanding performance requirements, the V169 is also available with a 2-GHz M-765 processor, which features a 533-MHz Front Side Bus, provides two Mbytes of cache, and consumes just 18W maximum.

The V169’s high-performance graphics subsystem, equipped with 64 Mbytes of RAM, provides 2D and 3D graphics acceleration with support for OpenGL and DirectX. The V169’s two independent front panel RGB video displays provide a resolution of 2048 x 1536 (24-bit color), and can be combined to support screen resolutions of up to 4096 x 1536. Both RGB ports support Sync-On-Green functions.

Standard I/O support for the V169 includes dual Gigabit Ethernet ports, three independent 64-bit, 100 MHz PMC expansion interfaces, dual 400-Mbit/sec USB 2.0 ports, and four serial ports, all of which are accessible via the front panel. Mass storage support includes dual front-panel Ultra SCSI-320 ports with differential outputs, which are ideal for hosting RAID devices. The V169 also features a pair of Ultra DMA-100 IDE ports. The primary IDE channel supports custom IDE devices such as a 2.5-inch hard disk drive, 40-Gbyte flash drive, or CompactFlash devices while retaining the PMC sites. The second IDE drive can accommodate two additional CompactFlash devices.

Software support for the V169 includes Windows 2000/XP, Solaris x86 and Linux.

For more information on this product, including price and availability, please contact General Micro Systems, Inc. at 8358 Maple Place, Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91730. Phone: (909) 980-4863. Fax: (909) 987-4863. E-mail: information@gms4sbc.com. World Wide Web site: www.gms4sbc.com.