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We can all think of many famous pairs throughout time – Batman and Robin, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, cartoon characters Tom and Jerry, or, better yet, ice cream moguls Ben and Jerry. Even the combo of good ol’ fashioned peanut butter and jelly has made its mark. Now Extreme Engineering and PA Semi are pairing off in an attempt to make their mark in the VPX/REDI technology world: EE recently announced its new XPedite8070 3U VPX/REDI SBC, which features PA Semi’s PA6T-1682 multicore PowerPC chip.
While the skeptical may say at first, “Yeah, so there’s another SBC entering the market,” they may do well to note some of the XPedite8070’s honorable mentions:
- The board is an actual red-hot VPX/REDI board (3U). To my knowledge, Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing and Mercury Computer Systems are the only other vendors to announce specific VPX/REDI boards thus far.
- According to Extreme Engineering, the Xpedite8070 SBC is the first to integrate PA Semi’s silicon-based PA6T-1682 Power Architecture dual-core processor. (Curtiss-Wright, Mercury, Themis, and Performance Technology have also signed on to deliver products featuring the PA6T-1682.)
- And what is the big deal about the PA Semi processor anyway? Several things, but the one most worth citing here is that it enables the new XPedite8070 to maintain extremely low power consumption for its board type: a mere 34 watts at 1.5 GHz. Of course, this type of board could (and would) normally exceed 50 or 60 watts.
- And last but not least … the board comes in several versions of itself: conduction-cooled 3U VPX and 6U VME, plus a PrPMC flavor. So this new SBC provides something for everyone’s applications – even the hard to shop for.
The XPedite8070’s other features include 2 GB DDR II (1 GB per core), 32 Mb NOR and 1 GB NAND flash, PCI Express and 10 GbE XAUI fabric interconnect, dual SGMII and dual isolated GbE ports, and support for Linux, WindRiver VXWorks, and PNE 1.4. Extreme Engineering also makes the bold guarantee that technical support questions will be answered within a four-hour window. (Anyone want to test them … ?)
And one final advantage … the XPedite8070 has its own optional “partner in crime”: the XPand1000 low-cost development chassis. How low can it go? Only $2,000, versus what Extreme Engineering claims to be the $10,000 to $20,000 companies may typically hand over for similar products.
So the real question is, in the long run, will Extreme Engineering’s new XPedite8070 SBC and PA Semi’s PA6T-1682 processor work together as well as, say, Beethoven and his Symphony No. 5? Only time will tell, but the prospects sure look good.
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