May 03. Radstone Technology announces the RT4PowerPactTM system, a small form factor compute engine for rugged applications.
In size, the RT4PowerPact system chassis approximates to a carton of CDs, 124mm (4.88″) wide, 132mm (5.2″) high and 255mm (10″) long. This total CompactPCI solution comes complete with Power Supply Unit, Radstone’s IMP1A CompactPCI PowerPC processor card and three conduction cooled 3U CompactPCI slots for application dependent hardware. This fully configured sub-system, adds new meaning to the phrase “application ready”. All standard fit COTS components are defined by Radstone, leaving the integrator totally free to concentrate on the application related feature set.
Low cost of ownership was a key design principle and this inevitably led to a modular structure that’s easy to manufacture and easy to upgrade in the field. More importantly, this philosophy acknowledges that core software and hardware architectures have to span multiple programmes and multiple uses within each programme. As a result, RT4PowerPact system mounting can be by any of its four sides and for those applications where pure conduction cooling is not possible, bolt on fin structures facilitate natural convection cooling. In addition, the pluggable Power Supply Unit is available with build variants covering a range of input and output voltage options.
Initial configurations include an IMP1A SBC offering a PowerPC 7410 processor @ 500MHz, up to two Ethernet ports, two serial ports, parallel I/O, BIT and support for VxWorks, LynxOS or Green Hills INTEGRITY Operating Systems. Beyond this baseline functionality expansion is by means of the IMP1A PMC site, CompactPCI cards or IMPCC1 PMC carrier cards. To reduce time to market and cost standard flexi-circuits route IMP1A and PMC signals to the I/O connector panel.
Offering a pre-configured and integrated solution also sets a new price precedent. With PSU, I/O wiring and a typical IMP1A firmware configuration the RT4PowerPact starts at just £8994 in single piece quantities.