VM6250 Kontron 6U VME PowerPC Single Board Computer

The Kontron VM6250 Series 6U VME PowerPC Single Board Computers are built around Freescale's state-of-the-art MPC8640/8641 single or dual-core e600 processor. The VM6250 provides exceptional I/O capabilities onboard and outstanding flexibility by being the first 6U VME board to provide support for PMC and XMC mezzanine cards. The VM6250's high performance, 2eSST, VME interface helps users preserve their investment in legacy VME equipment. The VM6250 was designed to be Kontron's next generation VME SBC providing substantial price and performance advantages over previous generations of VME computers.

The MPC864x processors feature an AltiVec engine to perform 128-bit wide parallel processing instructions (SIMD), and a four channel DMA controller to accelerate data transfers. In order to fill all the requirements with the best compromise between performance and power dissipation, the VM6250 has been manufactured in several different configurations. It can be equipped with a MPC8640 single or dual processor at frequencies of 1 GHz and 1.25 GHz or with a MPC8641 single or dual processor at a frequency of 1.33 GHz.

The MPC864x provide DDR2 memory controllers operating at up to 533 MHz with 72-bit wide DDR2 SDRAM configured with 8 bits of Error-Correcting Code (ECC). The peak memory bandwidth is 4.3 GB/s.

128 KB of Auto-store, Non-Volatile Random Access Memory allows backup of critical data when power is removed. Dual redundant 32 Mb NOR Flash are used to store firmware code and built-in tests, and two serial 64-Kbit EEPROMs are dedicated to system and application data storage. A USB 2.0 Flash drive slot has been manufactured onboard supporting low profile USB 2.0 Flash disk modules up to 8 GB. One dual SATA II and two USB 2.0 ports have also been manufactured on the P0 backplane connector. The VM6250 is equipped with the Alma VME controller supporting the VME64x and 2eSST protocols offering up to 320 MB/s peak throughput.

Two compliant VITA 31.1 Gigabit Ethernet links have been manufactured on P0 connector. In addition, one 4x PCI Express link has been manufactured on P0, which, optionally may be configured as one 4x Serial RapidIO link.

The VM6250 provides up to four 10/100/1000BASE-TX Ethernet interfaces, two EIA-232 serial lines, five general purpose I/Os, three USB 2.0 links, two SATA II interfaces and one 4x PCI-Express link. Two onboard Mezzanine Sites support PCI and PCI-Express cards.

The VM6250 has been designed to offer legacy I/O compatibility with the Kontron's VMPC6x and PowerEngine7 boards to provide for an easy path for technology insertion into existing systems.