header-dsp Curtiss Wright
>> Click here to get one of five free limited edition wartime posters...

Digital Signal Processors

>> Click here to learn more about our DSP Design Process

Curtiss-Wright's First VPX-REDI FPGA Engine Feature's Dual Xilinx Virtex™-5 LXT FPGAs and Freescale 8641 PowerPC®
>>read press release

CHAMP-AV6 VPX/VPX-REDI Card Named to EDN's Hot 100 Products of 2006
>>read press release

The Curtiss-Wright Controls Advanced Multi-Computing division builds high-performance digital signal processing computing solutions tailored to the needs of the most demanding defense applications such as radar, sonar, signal intelligence and image processing. Our digital signal processing products are founded on the principle of focusing on high-integrity design aimed at harsh environment applications, backed by customer support and lifecycle management to support the programmatic needs of defense customers. DSP products match these attributes with technology targeted to high-performance real-time data processing applications that demand multiple processors, FPGA compute engines, fabric interconnect and software to develop and debug complex systems. The Advanced MultiComputing division offers technology and support to solve any military/aerospace signal processing problem. We craft systems based on the following technology building blocks.

  • Multi-processor PowerPC boards
  • Xilinx Virtex family  FPGA-based reconfigurable compute engines
  • VME, VPX (VITA 46/48), PMC, and XMC form factors
  • Serial RapidIO and StarFabric high-speed switched serial interconnect
  • High-performance serial FPDP PMC modules for sensor interfaces
  • High-speed A/D PMC modules for digital radio, signal intelligence applications
  • High performance inter-processor communication (IPC) libraries
  • Signal Processing Libraries optimized for PowerPC Altivec

 

Use the left-hand navigation menu to browse through our digital signal
processing products, or choose your product from the chart below.

PowerPC-based Processing

  CHAMP-AV6

CHAMP-AV5

CHAMP-AV IV

Manta QX3

Form Factor

6U VPX/VITA 46/48

6U VME

6U VME

6U VME

Architecture

Independent Node

Independent

Node

Independent

Node

Shared Memory

Processor(s)

Quad 8641 1GHz - 1.33GHz Dual 1682 2GHz
Xilinx Virtex5
Quad 7447A/7448 1 GHz - 1.25GHz

Quad 7457

1 GHz

SDRAM

Up to
4 GB DDR
Up to
4 GB DDR
Up to
2 GB DDR

Up to
2 GB DDR

Flash

512KB

4GB

256MB

1GB

PMC/XMC sites 1x 8-lane PCIe

2x 64-bit/100MHz
2x 8-lane PCIe

2x 64-bit/100MHz

1x 64-bit/133MHz

Off-board bandwidth

10GB/sec

1 GB/sec

1 GB/sec

500MB/sec

Serial I/O

4 x EIA-232
2 x EIA-422

4 x EIA-232
2 x EIA-422 

4 x EIA-232

4 x EIA-232

2x EIA-422

Ethernet

2 x Gbe On-board Switch

2 x Gbe

On-board

Switch

2 x Gbe

On-board

Switch

2 x Gbe

Ruggedization

AC 0, 100

CC 100, 200
CC VITA 48.2, Type I

AC 0, 100

CC 100, 200

AC 0, 100

CC 100, 200

AC 0, 100

CC 100

Operating System support

VxWorks 6.x
Linux
Gedae

VxWorks 6.x

VxWorks 5.5/6.x
Linux
Gedae

INTEGRITY

VxWorks 5.5
Linux

INTEGRITY

Backplane Fabric

4 x SRIO
Or
3 x SRIO, 1 x PCIe

StarFabric

StarFabric

StarFabric

Other

16 x LVTTL I/O

2 x Gbe Onboard

Switch

16x LVTTL I/O
Xilinx Virtex5
8x LVTTL I/O

2x 1394A

 

FPGA-based Processing

  CHAMP-FX2

XMC-442

CHAMP-FX

SPMC/DPMC-440 Proware

Form Factor

6U VPX/VITA
46/48

XMC (VITA-42)

6U VME/
VITA 41

PMC

Architecture

Independent
PowerPC Node
FPGA Data Flow

FPGA Data Flow

FPGA Data Flow

FPGA Data Flow

Processor(s)

Single Dual-Core 8641D 1GHz


Dual Xilinx
Virtex-5 LXT
(LX110/220/330T)

Single Xilinx Virtex-5 SXT (SX50T/SX95T)

Dual Xilinx VP70/100

Xilinx VP40

SDRAM

8641: 512 MB or

1 GB DDR2
Across two banks

 

FPGAs: 512 MB or
1 GB DDR2 SDRAM
Across two banks per FPGA

Up to
256 MB DDR2
One bank

Up to
512 MB DDR

Up to
256 MB DDR

SRAM

36 MB QDR-II+
SRAM per FPGA
Across four banks

18 MB
Across two banks

Up to
9MB DDR-II Per FPGA

-

Flash

512MB

N/A

64MB

-

PMC/XMC sites 1 x 8-lane PCIe or
4-lane RapidIO

N/A

2 x 64-bit/66MHz

N/A

Off-board
Bandwidth

10GB/sec RapidIO

5-10 GB/sec
RocketIO

Up to 2 GB/sec PCI Express (4-lane)


Up to 5 GB/sec RocketIO

6 GB/sec

33/66 MHz PCI


2.5 GB/sec Front-panel RocketIO

2 GB/sec Rear-panel RocketIO

Serial I/O

1 x EIA-232
1 x EIA-422/232

-

1 x EIA-232

-

Ethernet

2 x Gbe

-

-

-

Ruggedization

AC 0,100
CC 100, 200, 300

AC 0,100
CC 100, 200

AC 0,100
CC 100, 200

AC 0,100
CC 100, 200

Operating System support

VxWorks 6.x
Linux
VxWorks on the basecard

VxWorks on companion PMC-106 processor

VxWorks on the basecard
Backplane Fabric 4 x SRIO
RocketIO

PCI Express (4-lane)

Serial RapidIO (4-lane)
RocketIO

StarFabric
RocketIO

33/66 MHz PCI

RocketIO

Other

FPGA-based


36-pairs LVDS DIO 16 LTTL DIO

FPGA-based


80-bits front-panel VDS/LVTTL (40 pairs)


48-bits rear-panel LVDS/LVTTL (24 pairs)


Select map and control bus when mounted on a CHAMP-FX2

FPGA-based DSP

FPGA-based DSP


30-bits front-panel LVDS/LVTTL (15 pairs)


48-bits rear-panel LVDS/LVTTL (24 pairs)

Operating Systems for DSP Applications
Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing offers customers with several choices of real-time operating systems for use on its CHAMP product line. The choices have commonality with those available for use on PowerPC based SBCs, so developers can have a single tool-chain to use on systems involving both DSPs and SBCs. Currently available operating system choices for use with the CHAMP product line include: INTEGRITY by Green Hills; VxWorks by Wind River; Linux from Curtiss-Wright; Gedae by Gedae Inc..

Digital Signal Processing Libraries
The CHAMP DSP products derive their floating-point performance from the PowerPC AltiVec unit. Programming the AltiVec is complex. For customers who prefer to focus on their algorithms, Curtiss-Wright offers the Continuum Vector DSP function library. Continuum Vector provides Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) which are compatible with other popular board vendor function library APIs and also with the open-standard Vector Signal Image Processing Library (VSIPL Core Lite profile).  This greatly simplifies the effort associated with porting existing software from other platforms to Curtiss-Wright hardware. Many functions are available in both single and double precision arithmetic.

Inter-Processor Communications
Military DSP applications employ multiple processors operating in a pipeline or in parallel. In either case, data must be transferred quickly and efficiently between the processors. Curtiss-Wright offers the Inter-Processor Communications (IPC) library to provide messaging and bulk data transfers in a multi-processor system. IPC provides a hardware-neutral interface for task-to-task communications. IPC will run with the same API on a single processor, or on a large system based on the both the Serial RapidIO and StarFabric switched interconnects.