FastVision Processor Board

Alacron introduces its newest multiprocessor board – FastVision. FastVision is for OEMs and End Users who anticipate a demand for diverse I/O requirements, higher bandwidth, complex image and digital signal processing, in a scalable multiprocessor platform. FastVision is a full-length PCI board with up to two AltiVec processors, each with 64-128 MB of dedicated high- speed (528 MB/sec) SDRAM and the capability of providing over 2.6-3.6 GFLOPS of computational power. Channel Link, Firewire and 64 bits of I/O provide the basis for high-speed communication with any datasource. Applications include digital communications, medical imaging, semiconductor wafer and mask inspection, radar and sonar signal processing.

The AltiVec G4 Processor
FastVision Features
Technical Specifications

Single slot PCI board for data capture, processing and display
Full computational power of up to two on-board 400MHz Motorola AltiVec (G4) vector processors, 7.2 GOPS (8bit) applied to video stream
64 to 128 MB of distributed SDRAM per processor
Dual 400Mb/s FireWire (IEEE 1394) controllers, each with two ports
Two 85 MHz bi-directional Camera Link ports for packet switched inter-card transfers at 2.38 Gbits/sec per port
Two PMC connections provide support for two 32 or 64 bit (33MHz) PMC modules and supports a 320 MB/s Fast Channel interface
33 or 66MHz, 64 or 32 bit primary PCI bus interface with a (non-transparent) bridge to local PCI bus
OS support: Linux and WindowsNT
Fast Channel:
- 80 MHz 32 bit persistent channels in 4 bit increments for intra- and interboard communication
- Point to point connections at up to 320 MB/s via cross bar interconnect
- Data traffic does not affect host CPU or PCI bus
- For more information on Fast Channel click here.

Technical Specifications

Block Diagram

Channel Link (LVDS)
Differential output voltage	+250 - 450mV
Data rate	>400 Mbps.

Camera Control
Serial port	Asynch. RS-232, 600–19,200 baud
Frame/line start outputs	2 RS-422
Master clock out.	See Channel Link
Pixel clock inputs	See Channel Link
Line/frame valid in.	See Channel Link
External trigger in.	2 RS-422
Power	No camera power provided by card; use an external supply

PCI Interfaces
Clock rate	33 MHz (PMC); 33 or 66 MHz (host)
Data width	64 or 32 bits
Peak DMA rate	264 or 132 MB/sec. peak
Standards compliance	PCI Rev. 2.1

Interfaces available via PMC Daughter-card:

NTSC/PAL Composite Video Capture
Input levels	1V peak-to-peak nom., 0.3 to 1.2V peak-to-peak max.
Input impedance	75 Ohms
Channel crosstalk	-50 dB max.
Resolution	8 bits
Formats supported	PAL BGHI, PAL N, PAL M, NTSC M, NTSC N, NTSC 4.43, NTSC-Japan, SECAM

Analog Video Capture (3 Channels)
Input levels	1V peak-to-peak nom 2.0V peak-to-peak max.; 50mV min. sync level when using composite sync
Input impedance	75 Ohms
Resolution	8 bits * 3 channels
Formats supported	Line scan and area scan
Input option	Each input can operate asynch.

Digital Video Capture
Common mode input range	0 to +5V (0 to 2.4V with LVDS option)
Input sensitivity	250 mV differential (100mV with LVDS option)
Input hysteresis	50 mV typical
Max. clock rate	40 MHz
Max. input data width	32 bits
Formats supported	ITU-R BT.656 (4:2:2 interlaced color) 8/10-bit mono variable/line scan 8/10-bit raw data 8/10-bit RGB 6-bit raw at 20 MHz (40 MB/sec.)
RS-422 input	RS-422, LVDS signaling

FastChannel
Alacron's FastChannel is a mechanism for the FastSeries components to communicate with the processing environment without impacting the PCI bus.

Alacron has acknowledged the need for a non-bussed form of data transfer within any high performance DSP or Imaging application. Bussed communication schemes are subject to bus saturation and contention, limiting their usefulness. The ideal interconnection scheme is to allow point to point communication from a data source to one or more data sinks. Each interconnection supports its data transfer and is isolated from any other data transfer, preventing bus saturation and contention.

FastChannel is Alacron's implementation of a point to point or point to many points connection between a data source and its sinks. FastChannel is available on Alacron's FastImage product and supports connections between the FastImage's internal resources - on the P4 connector of the PMC locations and on two ribbon cable connections for interboard communication.

FastChannel Diagram

In addition to its support for the one to many data transfers, FastChannel is configurable at startup. During operation the interconnections are static. Alacron has found that the need for an interconnection between a data source and sink is not dynamic in real-time and in high performance data processing applications - especially when the data rates are high. This fact allows for a significantly lower cost interconnect solution, and at the same time a simplification in software. No special hardware is required for source and destination addresses, arbitration, and control of the channel. Very simple software protocols can be implemented as the only operation allowed is the transfer of one 'word' of data.

The FastChannel is made up of three things, a parallel data path from 1 to 32 bits, a clock, and a data valid. In the current implementation, clock speeds are limited to 80 MHz and below, making the highest peak data transfer rate between a source and its sinks of 320 MB/s. The many connections in the FastChannel make it difficult to report an "overall" performance of the FastChannel - one specification that is often quoted is the cross section band-width, which is the sum of all active channels (non-blocked) data rates in the best cast. The cross-section bandwidth is 2.4 GB per second per FastImage board. Interboard communication is limited to 320 MB/s