SHARC3000 Alex Computer Systems Digital Signal Processing PCI Module

The Spectrum Signal Processing / Alex Computer Systems SHARC3000 Digital Signal Processing PCI Module is the most flexible and highest performance PCI-based DSP engine available. It can be configured with either 1 or 2 120MFLOP Analog Devices ADSP-2106x SHARC processors, and has the on-board capability to integrate a further 16 processors through two SHARCPAC module sites. Fully populated, the SHARC3000 delivers an aggregate performance of 2.16 GFLOPS and 4.32GBytes/sec communications bandwidth in a single PCI slot. The PLX chipset supports a Master/Slave PCI interface with transfer rates of up to 132MBytes/sec. The 32-bit block transfer capabilities assure compatibility with other third party PCI boards. The two on-board SHARC processors optionally have up to 3MBytes of external 48-bit zero-wait-state SRAM each. The PCI Host has access to both the internal and external memory of SHARC-0. These types of memory accesses provide a mechanism for program downloads and data transfers over the PCI bus. The optional SHARC-1 processor serves as an independent processing node.

To maximize system performance all inter-processor communication takes place via the SHARC's six 40MB/sec link ports, thus removing the bottleneck of using the PCI bus for all I/O communications. A total of 18 SHARC links are taken off board (2 at the end plate and 16 off the top of the board), allowing large parallel networks to be configured with a board-to-board bandwidth of over 700MBytes/sec. In addition to the 2 SHARCNET link port connectors, the end plate also has a JTAG port and a Global Reset in/out port. Two 40Mbit/sec serial ports and an RS-232 port are also available on-board.