3U CompactPCI Diagnosis Buffer with PowerPC MPC8314 and FPGA
19 July 2010
The F218 is a slave CPU board in 3U CompactPCI format and was developed for use as an Ethernet diagnosis buffer. It is based on the MPC8314 processor from the PowerQUICC II Pro family and offers frequencies of up to 266 MHz. This low-power processor excels through its especially advantageous price-performance-ratio and perfectly meets the requirements of the industrial market.
The board communicates with the system's host computer via Ethernet. The processor is connected to the CompactPCI bus via two Ethernet controllers in the FPGA, so that the host computer sees the F218 as an Ethernet device. As the boards communicate via the backplane, a cumbersome cable connection via the front of the CPU boards is not required.
The front I/O of the slave board includes two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, as well as a serial interface which is realised using an SA-Adapter. Optionally the onboard FPGA offers further I/O possibilities, such as additional fast Ethernet or UARTs.
Equipped with a 256MB DDR2 SDRAM and 16MB flash, the board offers abundant space for storing error messages. The temperature range of the F218 is -40 to +85°C, which qualifies the board for use in harsh environments. VxWorks can be started in less than 2 seconds.
