EDN has published and interesting article on FPGA, the novelty in it is that in times of economic downturn FPGA technology provides shorter development time, easier updates and fight against product obsolescence. The link is to be fair enclosed: http://www.edn.com/article/CA6643363.html?nid=2431&rid=8663980

For full feature please click on the link.

For us working with Acromag, we knew that FPGA features lend themselves very well to shorter time-to-market and lower cost. However the methodology is varied and requires preparation before attacking new project using FPGA.

Back to Business Excellence, this time in 2009

The whole financial systems crisis has brought misery to the economy as a whole. The Wall Street crisis has done the biggest crisis to the Main Street since the end of World War II, and that across the world.

The problem started, most would agree, with bursting bubble of real estate in the US. Prices started to drop in most areas making leveraged properties unsustainable. This shook the Fannie Mae and Freddy Mack mortgage guarantors in process that have spread to banking system and especially to investment banking. Banks stopped trading with each other. Short on cash, businesses close left and right shedding people in the same process.
We could spend time in front of media reading, watching and listening to talking heads analysing how it all came about to us. The premise is “we should have known that this is coming” and were supposed to “do something about it”.

Here lies the problem, all the rescuing should be done by politicians, who have no tools to influence the situation much other than cut taxes, throw money at the economy, and new regulations at industry as a whole and at financial sector in particular. Some could still play with state deficit, or exchange rates (if the country is not part of $ or € trade zone).

In the mean time politicians from Mr. Brown to Mr. Obama and many others mix intervention in economy with improving social justice as far as bonuses and pay packages are concerned. One could hardly improve the former not to mention the latter. Action calls for coordinated effort, but protectionism is rife. Size of financial packages ranges from +800 billion US$ in USA to only +20 billion € in Germany (in 2009).

Nevertheless the causes of current situation, the results are devastating, millions of people loose and lost their jobs. Companies are closing or calling Chapter 11 protection law. That affected even such IT flagships like Nortel Telecoms. Another victim is Qimoda. Banks in Germany lost their capital in droves, their shares are worth now:

Deutsche Bank lost 64% of its value
Allianz/Dresdner Bank lost 83%
Commerzbank lost 88% of its value!

What caused the mess was Greed, Arrogance and shear Herd Instinct. Interesting take was mentioned by Bill Clinton, who in Davos, brought up the loose billions of $ that looked for ways of making revenues after the dot.Com Economy busted in 2001. The Federal Reserve set the interest rates so low, that investors fled from savings Banking into better ways of making profit. And especially banks obliged. Subprime rate Mortgages were only the simplest leveraging instruments offered to investors at the time. Instruments became more and more leveraged none knows how much funds are there tied up. To some even pyramid schemes of Madoff kind were legit business models. All seem unreasonable now.


In the Eye of a Storm

As Main Street business sheds personnel, lowers costs, and in panic adopts survival mode things started to look really bad. It supposed to be especially bad for the finance, automotive and semiconductor industries. All of them have formidable lobbies that have connections to politicians, to media and in case of automobile industry, to strong labour unions.

This aspect of unions and politicians together made an explosive mixture of Stimuli to business and at the same time a run with the Social Justice issues, like pay and bonuses to bosses. This is not very good idea to mix them now. Loses started with run on Northern Rock, Lehman Brothers etc. UBS bank has written off some 40 billion of CHF, with losses at Credit Suisse it makes loses of some 10% of Switzerland GDP.

European Union with its strong € should act in coordination uncommon at the times of distress. Historically France was devaluating Franc, increase deficit and went on with business. Germany acting cautiously, would rather wait until US economy picks up lifting German economy on its export trade. This makes Ms. Merkel slow in response for the taste of like Mr. Sarkozy. Who prized quickly Britain for exemplary rescue package, but we know it for a fact now it is not enough. His recent prank was to loan over €6 billion to his auto industry, provided they don’t move out to Czech Republic. Russia, smarting from its default in the ‘90s, passed emergency law preventing run on its banks, and in Davos Mr. Putin has forewarned everyone not to renationalize economies, because there were there before with Gorbachev. Incidentally, the US that has bailed out its banking sector, thus renationalizing banks with taxpayer’s money going in direction Putin was warning not to go. The excuse and at the same time the assurance to US taxpayers was that during the 30’s many houses were repurchased by the state and eventually refloated back to market after economy has picked up again. Hopefully this would happen again.
Throwing good moneys at ailing businesses only prolongs their demise. Only no one has the guts to say that to the banking bosses. The Economist once said that “banking business is a hat trick business” it all depends on CONFIDENCE. And we no longer have that confidence our in banking system.


The Embedded Systems Industry

Certainly, Embedded Industry is suffering recently too, but it seem a secondary effect caused rather by a cash flow problems rather than market collapse. Orders from Automotive Industry have indeed sharply shrunk to a trickle starting in September 2008, but slowly picking up again in January 2009.
The fact to the matter is that Embedded Industry depends more on Ideas than on cash. There are two types of Embedded Enterprises: small to medium size, that success depends on hard work and money from the market reinvested into new and creative products. You could mention here Acromag Incorporated (www.acromag.com). A very successful company with around 70% of its business coming mainly from Aerospace industries or from Governments who are very steady Customers.
The other type is a large vendor of Embedded Products, with markets all over the world, good product range, effective marketing and Channel structure. These companies are flush with funds, and we mean CASH, buying technology from smaller companies.

The nature of Embedded Systems is an essentially based on clever ideas derived by usually by its own R&D departments or as in many smaller enterprises by its Owner, Evangelist, CTO or a leading engineer. Such companies typically grow in organic way, have their costs already tuned up to the business, personnel are being decently compensated but with out undue perks. I bet most of these companies continue to reinvest most of revenues back into business and their cost structure is one of the lowest in business. They usually do not pay dividends, and their access to investment capital is very difficult making them depend on their own ingenuity and they drive technology driven markets. They are small, nimble and innovative. They do not invest in market capture, as they have no such resources or time. They need to sell as much as possible of their new products, before End User turns to large vendors for economies of scale pricing.
Large vendors sit on their cash war chests, gobble smaller, creative and nimble outfits of their promising technologies and grow their market share. Recent 12 months saw disappearance of such known if not famous companies like SBS Computer, VMetro, Thales Computers or VSystems. Even Intel has sold its server business to Kontron.

Researching this article the writer interviewed over 30 executives in Embedded Industry. Most were very cautious and at the same time rather upbeat. Their outlook seemed positive and the only restriction on being openly optimistic was the fact that lots of moneys have disappeared from the economy in general and effect of it must somehow get to each of us individually.

Ulrich Gehrmann, Kontron Chairman was very positive but besides giving a preliminary data from 2008, wanted to turn our attention to a press conference on March 24 to reveal more. He said: Sales in 2008 rose by around 11% year-on-year to approximately EUR 495 million (previous year: EUR 446.5 million). This growth is considerably higher when adjusted for currency effects. In particular, Q4 sales of around EUR 139 million represented a new record level. This corresponds to nominal growth of approximately 13% compared with the same period of the previous year (EUR 123.9 million). The order book as of the year-end also remained at a high level of over EUR 290 million (previous year: EUR 268 million).

Siemens, Germany has also posted a growth in Sales during the 2008, by over 6.6% over the year 2007.

Joseph Primeau, Sales Director at Acromag, a Wixom, Michigan based company, has declined to give total sales figures for neither of 2008 nor 2007. His company, being in private hands refrains to report its figures, but he said: “considering the current financial situation world wide, we are cautiously optimistic and we look forward to a challenging and potentially rewarding year 2009. It is true that some industries suffer economically but we are staying with them along and would continue on their projects as soon as they are ready”.

Back to Normality

After some chatting about business most my executives were easy to admit: we need to have more CONFIDENCE in the economy and we all seem to long for NORMALITY again. Let us get back to what we do best. We develop and propagate most modern technologies in the embedded business, let us talk to our customers. They need our systems in Infrastructure, Utilities, Energy, Transportation, and Communication and in just about any branch of economy where our products are being utilized. Embedded Systems keep our economy running, they do it under the water line, invisibly, quietly and very reliably. We are in every building, every bridge, highway, tunnel, train, bus and so on. We could not move without traffic lights, ventilation and heating based on Embedded Technologies. Such products are needed in huge quantities, and since system requirements keep piling up, every couple of years we must replace and upgrade them anew.
Our industry has no lobby like the banks, aerospace and automobiles. We have no voice in parliaments, have poor access to media. But we employ large number of engineers, programmers, highly qualified personnel with their families, children.

Those who started their businesses after the Third Oil Shock of the 70’s, remember the “In Search of Excellence” book that appeared in the 80’s on the desks of every business manager and gave them a sense of direction to Excel in Customer Satisfaction. That is why each business strives to.
Back to Normality is the word for today. And we need to get back to Excellence like the title of the popular self-improvement book was calling us to aim back at Excellence in what we do. Let us do what we do best: Innovation in Embedded Systems. We won’t be mentioning finances.


S.baginski@bluewin.ch

New PMC modules feature Virtex-5 FPGA

NEWS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 12, 2009

Contacts: Sales - Inside Sales Department (e-mail: solutions@acromag.com)
Editorial - Robert Greenfield, Mktg. Comm. Mgr. (rgreenfield@acromag.com)

EMEA-Stefan Baginski, Managing Director Europe (sbaginski@acromag.com)

New PMC modules feature a Virtex-5 FPGA with an embedded PowerPC core for high-performance I/O signal processing.

Acromag’s new PMC I/O modules provide a Virtex-5 FPGA with hard core PowerPC for fast execution of the most complex and memory-intensive computing applications.

Wixom, MI: Acromag’s new PMC-VFX modules feature a Xilinx^® Virtex^™-5 FPGA with a hard core PowerPC block that is reconfigurable for high-performance I/O processing and user-developed computing applications. Now users can offload CPU-intensive operations such as video/ 3D data processing or floating-point math for superior system performance. For fast data transfer in and out of the FPGA, the PMC-VFX provides large banks of DDR2 DRAM and dual-port SRAM for high-speed DMA transfer to the PCI bus. A high-throughput PCI-X interface ensures plenty of bandwidth to rapidly move data. An assortment of plug-in I/O extension modules offers great flexibility to interface various analog and digital I/O signal types. By streamlining the design and limiting the features to core functions needed for fast and easy implementation, Acromag makes FPGA-based computing accessible to many more applications. Boards start at $4950 with extended temperature (-40 to 85°C) and conduction-cooled models available.

The PMC base card provides 64 I/O channels or 32 LVDS lines accessible via P4 rear connectors. Inserting optional front-connecting AXM I/O extension modules augments I/O processing capabilities with an efficient interface for 16-bit 105MHz A/D conversion , CMOS digital I/O, RS-485 differential signals, or extra LVDS I/O lines. Typical uses include processing of video, 3D data, radar/sonar, software-defined radio, electronic warfare, floating-point math and fuzzy logic algorithms.

Powerful and versatile, this PMC module employs Xilinx’s VFX70T Virtex-5 FPGA with 71,680 logic cells and an embedded PowerPC 440 processor 32-bit RISC core. With the configurable FPGA’s hard core PowerPC, developers can customize off-the-shelf PMC modules and use high-performance parallel and serial processing to solve the most challenging computing applications. The PowerPC core also enables system-on-chip functionality with real-time processing capabilities.

- more -

Application programs are downloaded directly into the FPGA or to the 32MB flash memory from the PCI bus. Acromag’s Engineering Design Kit provides utilities to help users develop their programs, load VHDL into the FPGA, and to establish DMA transfers between the FPGA and the CPU. The kit includes a compiled FPGA file and example VHDL code provided as selectable blocks with examples for the local bus interface, read/writes, and change-of-state interrupts to the PCI bus. A JTAG interface allows users to perform on-board VHDL simulation. Further analysis is supported with a ChipScope™ Pro interface.

Acromag supports the Virtex-5 FPGA with plenty of memory and a high-speed interface for efficient data handling. Two banks of 64Mb x 16-bit DDR2 SDRAM are ready to receive data from the I/O ports for FPGA processing. Processed data moves to two banks of 256Kb x 32-bit dual-ported SRAM for high-speed DMA transfer to the PCI bus. A high-bandwidth PCI-X interface delivers rapid data throughput. The PCI-X interface supports 100MHz and 66MHz PCI bus modes.

For easy integration of the boards with embedded Windows^® applications, Acromag developed a DLL driver software package for compatibility with Microsoft^® Visual C++™, and Visual Basic. Sample files with “C” source demonstration programs provide easy-to-use tools to test operation of the module.

For connectivity with real time application programs, Acromag offers C libraries for VxWorks^®, QNX^®, and other operating systems. The libraries provide generic routines (source code included) to handle reads, writes, interrupts, and other functions. Demonstration programs enable the developer to quickly exercise the I/O modules before attaching the routines to the application program. This diagnostic tool can save hours of troubleshooting and debugging. Free Linux example programs are also available.

Acromag has designed and manufactured measurement and control products for more than 50 years. They are an international corporation with a world headquarters near Detroit, Michigan and a global network of sales representatives and distributors. Acromag offers a complete line of embedded I/O products including bus boards, mezzanine modules, wiring accessories, and software. Industries served include military, aerospace, manufacturing, transportation, utilities, and scientific research laboratories.

For more information about Acromag products, call Inside Sales or Marketing Communications at (248) 295-0310, (877) 295-7092, FAX (248) 624-9234, or write Acromag, Inc. at P.O. Box 437, Wixom, MI 48393-7037 USA. Information is also available on the Internet at www.acromag.com.

# # #

Photo and CD-ROM with high-resolution digital image enclosed
Shown: PMC-VFX FPGA I/O module

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Wixom, Michigan hotel near Palace of Auburn Hills - Comfort Suites 48393, MI156

Wixom, Michigan hotel near Palace of Auburn Hills - Comfort Suites 48393, MI156

This is the hotel I am stying while meeting Acromag and OpenSystems Media.
The wheather is nice temperatures around 30s, sunny, with some wind.

FPGA Modules with Xilinx® Virtex™-5 FPGA from ACROMAG

	Building on the success of our previous lines of user-configurable FPGA modules, this new product family features even larger FPGAs and more powerful digital signal processing capabilities. l Xilinx® Virtex™-5 FPGA The PMC-VLX and PMC-VSX boards use a high-performance Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA, but remain affordable for mainstream applications. Three models let you select an FPGA to match your requirements. An engineering design review of PMC-VLX/VSX, pdf 2MB High-Performance Memory Two banks of DDR2 DRAM memory are available for receipt and transfer of high-speed data from the I/O data ports on the board’s front and rear connectors. Dual-port SRAM memory stores data to be passed, via DMA transfer, to the PCI bus. One dual port is attached to the FPGA and the other to the local bus. High-Speed PCI-X Interface Our high-bandwidth PCI-X interface ensures fast data throughput. The PCI-X interface supports 133MHz, 100MHz, and 66MHz PCI bus modes. AXM Plug-in I/O Interface Cards I/O processing is handled on a separate mezzanine card that plugs into the FPGA base board. A variety of these external I/O cards offer an interface for your analog and digital I/O signals. • RS485 I/O • TTL/RS485 combo • LVDS I/O • Low voltage TTL I/O • 14-bit A/D • Custom Typical Applications Although there is no limit to the uses for Acromag’s FPGA I/O boards, several applications are ideal for this new technology. Common uses include military servers, telecommunication, and digital signal processing. Take advantage of the optional conduction cooling for use in hostile environments. Engineering Design Kit Acromag provides software utilities and examples to simplify your programming and get you started quickly. A JTAG interface enables on-board VHDL simulation. Video: "Custom Board Level FPGA Solutions Overview" (.wmv) Article: "Right-Sizing FPGA Mezzanines Expands Application Space" by Joseph Primeau, Acromag Dir of Mktg & Sales, as seen in RTC Magazine. User-configurable FPGA solutions Download your own application code into a powerful FPGA to perform custom signal processing functions. PMC FPGA Modules Mid-performance solutions with user-configurable Virtex Series FPGAs.
Copyright © 2006 Acromag, Inc. All rights reserved.	phone: +41 62 758 3222 email: sbaginski@acromag.com fax: +41 62 758 3223 Copyright © 2008 Acromag, Inc. All rights reserved.

Unlikely Partners, persistent influence on Kontron and Diamond Systems

The writer was instrummental in formulating the Vision of new Market niche in COM business. Identified two unlikely partners with leading technologies crutial to the vision success, and hammered both sides into signing the Partnership Agreement in February 2008.

The press conference that took place in Nürnberg on February 27, attracted some 2 dozens of Editors, mostly from German speaking countries. Two companies, unlikely partners, sometime and up to a point even competitors, it took guts forge the Partnership.

Kontron a renown and well established vendor of Embedded Solutions beside many other things in the IT Industry. With total revenues touching almost €1 Billion per year. Diamond Systems a known vendor in PC/104 ruggedized solutions with especially strong following in Military and Aerospace industries, the size of annually revenues roughly 30-40 times smaller.

Both being Visionaries and Movers saw a ground breaking Opportunity to the beckoning COM market.

They saw End Users studying their respective product catalogues and could not find satisfactory solution to their problems. They would analyse market, searched for Off-the-shelf products, and failed to find all encompassing solution. Because their annual need was exceeding 500-700 units or more. Easily their bosses have resigned and accepted costs and time-to-market loss to develop its own solution. Any after some 2 years of trial and development time, they usually came up to a solution that mostly satisfied the boss, as far as cost of development, resources and lost time-to-market.

Kontron came up with the EXT idea already in 1998, used its best know how of how to build a CPU on a Module, with standard interfaces to the carrier board.

Diamond Systems build standard boards with variants for strategic customers also for years. Its „forte“ are I/O’s, Neptun is a Customized Base Board that accepts ETX and constitutes a complete solution, it is practically Off-the-shelf too. Thus by joining their respective products a solution is being hammered out that allows customers to purchase their „Custom“ BaseBoards Off-the-shelf with already integrated ETX processor module. Thus cutting the End User development time by about 2 years, freeing resources for other tasks, and Cutting Time-to-Market on their Competitors

On February 26, 2008. in Nuremberg, Germany. Diamond Systems Corporation and Kontron, worldwide leaders of embedded I/O and CPU products and technologies respectively announced a strategic partnership at the Embedded World show to deliver high integration “single board” solutions using Kontron ETX modules with Diamond Systems off-the-shelf and custom I/O intensive carrier boards. As a cornerstone of the agreement, Diamond Systems will develop and produce carrier boards to meet the unique requirements of embedded designs requiring analogue and/or digital I/O, extensive serial communications and/or wide-ranging DC power input. Diamond Systems will then select from a wide performance range of Kontron Computer-on-Module (COM) CPU offerings to deliver complete yet flexible, fully integrated solutions to the customer.

Kontron will promote and fully support Diamond Systems by sharing and jointly pursuing sales opportunities, and by providing special support and marketing programs. Diamond Systems will retain primary customer support responsibilities. This announcement enables Diamond Systems to offer OEMs access to superb CPU technology coupled with the best-in-class analogue and digital I/O technology. OEMs and system integrators around the world who build applications in automation, data acquisition, medical, military, transportation, and instrumentation markets now have a unique choice in Diamond Systems for performance flexibility and obsolescence mitigation without having to manage multiple suppliers for carrier board design, contract manufacturing, and off-the-shelf CPU modules.

“We are excited to partner with Diamond Systems to enhance the usage of our leading line of ETX modules within multiple market segments,” said Dirk Finstel, chief technology officer of Kontron Embedded Modules Division. “Products and services from Diamond Systems and Kontron complement one another very well. Even more system OEMs around the world can now transition to COM-based architectures thanks to this cooperation.”

“As the PC/104 I/O leader for the past 15 years, Diamond Systems has helped hundreds of OEMs develop systems with extensive I/O requirements, especially systems required to operate reliably in the harshest environments,” said Jonathan Miller, president of Diamond Systems. “A key factor in the success of the small PC/104 form factor has been the richness of available off-the-shelf I/O. Now, Diamond Systems is building on this background to enable a broad base of OEMs to use Kontron’s flexible, low cost, rugged Computer-On-Module CPUs, by offering both off-the-shelf and custom COM baseboards with extensive I/O capabilities.”

Diamond Systems’ I/O expertise includes analogue I/O (A/D and D/A), digital I/O, serial communications, multifunction networking, and power supply designs with wide input ranges. This expertise easily carries over into the COM domain. For example, the data acquisition circuitry for Diamond Systems’ COM carrier boards utilizes the same proven high-accuracy circuitry found on Diamond Systems’ industry-leading DMM-32X-AT PC/104 module. Even for modest I/O requirements, Diamond Systems has an extensive database of proven I/O designs for cost-sensitive, long lifecycle, and low power applications.

Diamond Systems’ unique Universal Driver programming software for Linux, Windows XP and CE, and QNX operating systems is available to all carrier board customers. This driver complements and greatly extends the basic CPU support software from Kontron by ensuring that the BIOS, basic BSP and I/O driver software all works together out of the box.

There is no reason not to believe that above numbers to be conservative, as COM Market is huge and annually millions of boards/systems are being deployed. Kontron and Diamond systems may recognize this opportunity and step up marketing and Sales efforts, co-ordinated or not, to participate to the fullest extent in this market. In case the COM market develops rapidly over the next 12-24 months, it is conceivable that both companies may step up and deepen its cooperation to properly address each new opportunities or efficiencies that would shorten End User Time-to-market

However this business seem a bit asymmetrical, the writer is getting more and more inquiries from various places mostly associated with Kontron products, who ask about right to distribute the above solution to their customers. This part of business is not projected here yet, and needs to be added over and above the projection.

Neptune

Neptune is an ultra high integration EPIC form factor single board computer combining state-of-the-art CPU and I/O technology with Diamond System’s renowned high accuracy data acquisition circuitry on a single board. Neptune is available with a selection of CPU modules, offering you the perfect combination of price, performance and power. Neptune also offers up to 2GB of DDR/DDR2 DRAM via SODIMM, provides a

Renewable Energy Application

Renewable Energy Application using Diamond Systems PC/104 based solution reduces operating and maintenance costs

By Stephen Baginski

In recent time we observe quite strong shift in the wide population’s perception of climate status and the prevailing opinion is that we experience Global Warming for some time already. This is nothing new some pundits would say. What is new this time is that people and governments think that humans can do something substantial about it and decided to tax CO₂ emissions and to use the funds to subsidise the alternative technologies that would help reduce consumption of fossil fuels. One such technology is wind power.

Wind power is the conversion of wind energy into more useful forms, usually electricity, using wind turbines. At the end of 2006, worldwide capacity of wind-powered generators was some 75,000 megawatts; although it currently produces just over 1% of world-wide electricity use, it accounts for approximately 20% of electricity use in Denmark, 9% in Spain, and 7% in Germany. Globally, wind power generation more than quadrupled between 2000 and 2006.

Most modern wind power is generated in the form of electricity by converting the rotation of turbine blades into electrical current by means of an electrical generator. In windmills (a much older technology), wind energy is used to turn mechanical machinery to do physical work, such as crushing grain or pumping water.

Wind power is used in large scale wind farms for national electrical grids as well as in small individual turbines for providing electricity to rural residences or grid-isolated locations.

Wind energy is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, clean, and reduces toxic atmospheric and greenhouse gas emissions if used to replace fossil-fuel-derived electricity (which hasn't ever happened due to the need for conventional backup of all wind inputs to a grid). The intermittency of wind seldom creates problems when using wind power at low to moderate penetration levels (though such intermittency has caused problems for grid stability in Denmark and Germany, where penetration is greatest).

Using the wind to create electricity has been around for a long time - you've probably seen windmills on farms. Ancient Babylonian and Chinese used wind power for water irrigation purposes. When the wind turns the blades of a windmill, it spins a turbine inside a small generator to produce electricity, just like a big coal power plant.

A windmill on a farm can make only a small amount of electricity - enough to power a few farm machines. To make enough electricity to serve lots of people, power companies build "wind farms" with dozens of huge wind turbines.

Wind farms are built in flat, open areas where the wind blows at least 25 km per hour. In USA, Iowa currently has more than 600 wind turbines, producing enough electricity to power 140,000 homes. Minnesota and Wisconsin are also home to wind farms – and the number is growing every day i.e. a farm photographed by the writer near Palm Springs, CA.

The insides of the wind turbine are shown below:

As seen on the above schematic, it is relatively costly and complicated piece of equipment, that requires top investment funds to build and service and maintenance contracts to cost effectively keep this equipment in running condition as long as possible. Here enters Diamond Systems Europe GmbH with its Distributor in Germany, which together with local System Integrator (SI) have supplied a system to monitor and to predict scheduled maintenance procedures that with given exact mechanical and thermal status would tell service personnel what exact actions are required to reduce down time and reduce or even eliminate the cost of breakdowns thus spare parts savings and increase in produced electrical power.

Diamond Systems Europe GmbH is an international vendor of ruggedized and compact computer boards that can be stacked into small boxes, can work without moving parts themselves (no fan). With low power consumption the systems generates limited amount of heat thus no need for cooling fan. Besides small foot print, low power consumption, the DSE systems are withstanding high degree of vibration on board of such rotating equipment, and in full sun, it could work in temperatures up to +85deg C or at -40deg C in winter.

Diamond Systems Europe GmbH has another speciality is its exceptionally high precision of analogues signal processing abilities. To measure all required analogue inputs a solution based on it Prometheus family of boards was selected by the System Integrator in Baden Württemberg, Germany.

The space-saving Prometheus combines a full-featured 486 CPU with an intelligent, professional-quality data acquisition circuit including analogue I/O, digital I/O, and counter/timers, all on one board. Its low power consumption of 5 watts eliminates the need for a heat sink or fan and enables guaranteed operation over the range of -40 to +85oC. Prometheus has been successfully used in applications including satellites, military combat vehicles, and process control.

Built-in I/O includes a 10/100Mbps Ethernet port, 2 USB ports, 4 RS-232 ports with serial console capability, PS/2 keyboard/mouse, IDE port, parallel port, and floppy port. Prometheus also includes a real-time clock with backup battery and a programmable watchdog timer with both hardware and software retrigger capability.

Prometheus is compatible with a solid state flash disk modules that provide IDE-compatible mass storage in a rugged format that bolts onto the board and requires no special drivers. See http://diamondsystems.com for more information. For DOS applications, it includes a built-in flash file system that lets you store DOS operating system and application files right in the on-board flash memory without requiring any external storage. This saves time, reduces cost, and increases the ruggedness of your system. Prometheus is available in three versions:

The built-in data acquisition circuit is identical to the one used on the Athena CPU (http:/diamondsystems.com. It provides 16 analogue inputs with 16-bit A/D resolution and a comprehensive set of features, including programmable input ranges, single-ended and differential inputs, and interrupt-based sampling with FIFO support. The circuit also provides 4 12-bit analogue outputs with selectable output ranges, 24 digital I/O lines with programmable direction and enhanced output current, and 2 programmable counter/timers for sample rate control, event counting, and programmable interrupt generation.

Version	Description
EA	Full-featured model, with 10/100Mbps Ethernet and data acquisition
E	Includes Ethernet, no data acquisition
LC	No Ethernet or data acquisition; 16MB RAM; Extra-low power consumption of 2 watts

Flexible Storage Options

The on-board 2MB of flash memory contains system BIOS (http:/www.diamondsystems.com/support/prombios) and plenty of room for an embedded OS and user programs in diskless applications. The BIOS provides support for using this flash memory to emulate a diskette drive. It can be configured as either a bootable A: drive or a non-bootable B: drive. Both MS-DOS and ROM-DOS can be loaded, along with application software, right into the flash, totally eliminating the need for external storage media. (Same link as above) for more information on this exclusive feature. For connection to an external hard disk, a 44-pin IDE connector is provided that includes both IDE signals and power. The board will accept the direct mounting of a flash disk module, providing up to 128MB of additional rugged, solid state memory right on the board.

Data Acquisition Circuitry

PROMETHEUS contains a complete data acquisition circuit at a level of performance matching our Diamond-MM-16-AT board (without auto calibration). It has 16 analogue inputs with 16-bit resolution and 100,000 samples per second maximum sampling rate. The analogue inputs feature programmable gain, unipolar and bipolar input ranges, and single-ended and differential configuration. The 4 analogue outputs have 12-bit resolution and output ranges of 0-5V or +/-5V. The 24 digital I/O feature programmable direction. Two counter/timers provide a means for user-generated timing signals, counting of external pulses, and control of the A/D sampling rate.

ATX Power Supply

PROMETHEUS provides ATX power compatibility. The power can be turned on by pressing a momentary switch. If the switch is pressed a second time and held for 2 seconds, the power will turn off. The auxiliary output power connector for external drives is also switched on and off with this circuit.

A picture of Prometheus CPU board in PC/104 format

The optional data acquisition circuit on Prometheus is equivalent to a full-featured analogue I/O expansion board, with analogue I/O, digital I/O, and counter/timer functions.

The 16 analogue inputs have 16-bit resolution, programmable gain of 1, 2, 4, and 8, and maximum input range of +/-10V in bipolar mode or 0-10V in unipolar mode. Both single-ended (2-wire) and differential (3-wire) inputs may be accommodated. Using the built-in FIFO and interrupts, the board can achieve sample rates of up to 100 KHz in both single-sample and scan modes.

The board also has 4 12-bit analogue output channels. The output range is jumper-selected between 0-10V or +/-10V. On power-up, the outputs may be configured to clear to mid-scale or zero-scale, so that they always power up to 0V for safety.

Prometheus also has 24 digital I/O lines organized as 3 8-bit ports. The direction of each port is programmable. When in output mode, each port has a high-drive buffer capable of supplying up to -10/+30mA of output current per pin.

Prometheus has two counter/timers for timing operations. The first counter is 24 bits wide and is generally used to control A/D sampling rate. Driven by a user-programmable 10MHz or 1MHz on-board clock, it can provide output pulses anywhere from 10MHz down to 0.06Hz. The second counter/timer is 16 bits wide and can be driven by either 10MHz or 100 KHz on-board clocks or a user-supplied input signal. It can be used for timing, counting/totalizing, or programmable interrupt generator functions.

All data acquisition I/O signals are available on a single 50-pin header that mates with a standard ribbon cable.

The optional data acquisition circuit on Prometheus is equivalent to a full-featured analogue I/O expansion board, with analogue I/O, digital I/O, and counter/timer functions.

The 16 analogue inputs have 16-bit resolution, programmable gain of 1, 2, 4, and 8, and maximum input range of +/-10V in bipolar mode or 0-10V in unipolar mode. Both single-ended (2-wire) and differential (3-wire) inputs may be accommodated. Using the built-in FIFO and interrupts, the board can achieve sample rates of up to 100 KHz in both single-sample and scan modes.

The board also has 4 12-bit analogue output channels. The output range is jumper-selected between 0-10V or +/-10V. On power-up, the outputs may be configured to clear to mid-scale or zero-scale, so that they always power up to 0V for safety.

Prometheus also has 24 digital I/O lines organized as 3 8-bit ports. The direction of each port is programmable. When in output mode, each port has a high-drive buffer capable of supplying up to -10/+30mA of output current per pin.

Prometheus has two counter/timers for timing operations. The first counter is 24 bits wide and is generally used to control A/D sampling rate. Driven by a user-programmable 10MHz or 1MHz on-board clock, it can provide output pulses anywhere from 10MHz down to 0.06Hz. The second counter/timer is 16 bits wide and can be driven by either 10MHz or 100 KHz on-board clocks or a user-supplied input signal. It can be used for timing, counting/totalizing, or programmable interrupt generator functions.

All data acquisition I/O signals are available on a single 50-pin header that mates with a standard ribbon

cable.

Prometheus has a total of 9 I/O headers to manage its large quantity of I/O. Because there are several options, including a cable-free method, no cables are provided with the board. All I/O connection options are sold separately.

Panel Board

About Diamond Systems Europe GmbH

Diamond Systems Europe GmbH is located near the Zurich Airport in Switzerland and is a 100% subsidy of Diamond Systems Corporation of Mountainview, California. DSE can be contacted by phone: +41 44 850 7002 or on Internet: www.diamondsystems.ch

About the author

Stephen F. Baginski was for years the European Bureau Chief at Open Systems Publishing (www.opensystems-publishing.com), one of the largest publishing houses for open systems. He is consulting on Embedded Technology for customers like Kontron, Siemens, Nokia-Mayfair, Diamond and others. He is based in Switzerland and carries Canadian citizenship.

Prior to OSP, Stephen held positions of responsibility with General Electric at Danforth Facility (classified project), Ontario Research Foundation (nuclear projects), Sniffer Technology (network security, wireless) in Santa Clara, SAAB-Fairchild Electronic (avionics) in Södertälje, Sweden; and Kontron (former PEP) Modular Computers (VME-Autobahn Project, with Motorola) in Kaufbeuren, Germany.

Stephen responsibilities progressed from System Engineer to Managing Director and CEO.

He received B.E and M.E. in Engineering Science from Technical University of Breslau.

Stephen professional affiliations include (past and present): Society of Manufacturing Engineers, American Management Association, Society of American Engineers, Association of Professional Engineers of the province of Ontario now PEO, Royal Engineering Association of Sweden, German Engineers Society (VDI), he was active in VITA Europe. Dr. Baginski is also member of the Association of Swiss Journalists, and the International Federation of Journalists.

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He is married, has two children. In his spare time he enjoys yachting, mountain-biking, and reading. Stephen is member of the cantonal champion’s team in Reiden, shooting small calibre sports pistol SIG5.6mm.