SHARC6000 Alex Computer Systems Digital Signal Processing VME Module

The Spectrum Signal Processing / Alex Computer Systems SHARC6000 Series Digital Signal Processing VME Module 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 SHARC6000 delivers an aggregate performance of 2.16 GF LOPS and 4.32GBytes/sec communications band-width in a single VME slot.

The VIC64 chipset supports a Master/Slave VME interface with transfer rates of up to 70MBytes/sec. The 32 and 64-bit block transfer capabilities assure compatibility with other third party VME boards. The two on-board SHARC processors optionally have up to 16MBytes of 32-bit DRAM and up to 3MBytes of 48-bit zero-wait-state SRAM each. The VME Bus Master has access to the internal memory of SHARC-0 as well as its external SRAM and DRAM. These types of memory accesses provide a mechanism for program downloads and data transfers over the VME 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 VME bus for all I/O communications. A total of 18 SHARC links are taken off board (2 through the P2 connector and 16 to the front panel), allowing large parallel networks to be configured with a board-to-board bandwidth of over 700 Mbytes/sec.

Configuration, diagnostic, and system status LED's are displayed on the VME front panel together with a board reset button, a JTAG port, and up to 16 SHARCNET link-port connectors. Two 40Mbit/sec serial ports and an RS-232 port are also available.