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Embedded Workstation Benefits
by Caroline Quercy, CETIA, Inc.
Single-Board Computer vendors used to provide one specific operating system for one specific hardware architecture. Click here to view a chart. Today, the trend is definitely to provide as many operating systems as possible for each and every architecture. At the same time, board technology trends towards more performance, more functionality, and more integration. The embedded world reaped maximum benefit from this double evolution. As technology evolved, workstations could be implemented with a single large board. The same technology evolution has allowed workstation functionality to shrink to a single VME SBC, perhaps with a single small daughter card.
The successful workstations of only a few years ago were all VME based. This is where SUN and Silicon Graphics both started. Apollo which merged into HP also had VME available. Originally CETIA also started by the designing and manufacturing of VMEbus workstations running a UNIX operating system with a graphical interface.
Naturally, CETIA evolved towards the embedded market, which offers more compactness, easier maintainability, scalability and modularity.
COMPACTNESS
Whereas a workstation was once a large, 9U VME box, now several workstations can be installed in a smaller 6U box. Click to view a CETIA desktop workstation. Compactness of the VME architecture enables you to put several VME boards in the same VME chassis, therefore enabling tremendous cost savings in terms of space, packagings, peripherals and power supplies.
The "workstation" now has much more capability than before, with the corresponding shrink of I/O and DSP cards. Whereas an application previously might have required multiple VME chassis networked together, this will now fit into a single VME chassis.
If we take the example of a robotics application, the workstation providing the man/machine interface and supervising the application, as well as the vision system, A/D and D/A boards, and control systems are all in the same box.
This is an interesting solution for applications where space is a luxury: applications such as ship-based and airborne systems. An entire Ethernet network can be replaced by several CPUs dialoguing on the VMEbus. CETIA has implemented the PowerNet architecture, where several CPUs are communicating via TCP/IP on the VME backplane. Embedded workstations are also often the only answer to military applications that require certain levels of ruggedization.
MAINTAINABILITY
When combining identical CPUs in the same VME chassis, tremendous savings in terms of maintainability are gained.
Standard workstations have shorter and shorter life cycles. Their packaging does not respect any particular standard, and therefore, the whole workstation needs to be replaced when switching to a new architecture or even upgrading. With an embedded workstation, you only need to upgrade a particular module, thus preserving the rest of your investments. You are able to protect your I/O investment, the I/O development and porting cycle being quite long and requiring an important development effort.
SCALABILITY
Embedded workstations offers the advantages of scalability: the VME user can modify a system from a low-performance architecture in terms of CPU, graphics or I/O performance to a high-performance workstation.
In terms of graphics requirements, developing a 2K x 2K graphics card can be expensive and requires a long development cycle. You need lots of bandwidth and CPU performance. Embedded VME systems are the response for Air Traffic Control applications for example, where modularity at the graphics level is required, by providing off-the-shelf low cost standard or high performance specific graphics boards.
CETIA offers a large graphics performance scale of embedded workstations, by combining a CETIA PowerEngine PowerPC60x controller with a CETIA graphics card ( resolutions from 640 x 480 up to 1600 x 1200 are available).
In terms of CPU performance requirements, you can build a higher performance embedded workstation, by combining several CPUs in the same VME system, using CETIA's PowerNet cluster technology, under LynxOS, AIX and VxWorks. CETIA was involved recently in a project combining several different architectures : the EUROPRO. The EUROPRO is a new architecture, which integrates PowerPC microprocessors as well as DSP architectures, and combines both VME and PMC boards. This architecture is designed for intensive data and signal processing applications.
MODULARITY
The use of the VMEbus allows access not only to CETIA's base modules, but also to a vast variety of VME cards, thanks to standardization of hardware. In one single VME chassis, you can now combine a range of I/O modules, offering a wide array of functionalities.
The VME user can enhance his system by plugging in additional modules (graphics, communications, memory, etc). The arrival of the PCI/PMC architecture opens the game even more and brings a whole new world of affordable enhancements to the VME embedded world. All to the customer's benefit!
FUNCTIONALITY
Thanks to hardware standardization a CPU can run different operating systems and several different operating systems may run on several different CPUs within the same VME system. Depending on their real-time requirements, the VME user is able to choose from a wide range of real time operating systems.
If the VME user is looking for binary compatibility with a UNIX environment, he can develop natively on his embedded workstation, on a CPU running a UNIX operating system, and have access to a large applications catalog. He can also conduct cross-development from a standard host workstation.
Advantages of both worlds, the UNIX world and the Real-Time Operating Systems (LynxOS, VxWorks, VADScross, AdaWorld, OSE, Chorus..) world can be combined within a single embedded system: (click here to view a graphic of market segmentation by application) a wide variety of third party applications and tools from the UNIX world and features such as fast response time, priority definition and PROMability from the real-time operating systems world.
The EUROPRO application, which is a signal processing application, is a typical example.
The signal processing architectures have so far been generally based on Digital Signal Processor (DSP) boards. The resulting high-performance architectures are often proprietary and the software environment closed to open environments and CASE tools. The technological breakthrough recently emerging from superscalar RISC processors, and leading to outstanding integer and floating point performance, now makes it possible to build open and standard multiprocessing architectures for signal processing and intensive dataprocessing applications.
Advantages of the use of an embedded workstation are numerous. These benefits are increased even more with the use of microprocessor architectures such as the PowerPC family, which brings the advantage of interoperability: Binary compatibility across the PowerPC family (601, 603, 604), helps the preservation of software investments when upgrading your PowerPC CPU within the embedded workstation.
For additional information, contact CETIA, Inc., 58 Charles Street, Cambridge, MA 01241; Tel: 617 494 0987.
Send an email to Caroline Quercy
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