Upgrade VME 68K systems

Hi,

I am looking at options for upgrading a VME based system with a 68K CPU running a RTOS. Each system has a 32 channel ADC and 32 channel DAC and 96 discrete I/O. My reason for upgrading is that the VME 68K CPU is obsolete and there are no viable replacement options. There are some manufacturers that have replacement options but these are being phased out and will not be available in 2-3 years. Also, these aren't drop-in replacmements and will require programming. The ADC we use is also obsolete, but there is another company we can use for the time being. Again I don't know how long they will keep manufacturing these boards.

We have 100+ systems and I would like a hardware platform that is supported for several years. It looks like VME is being phased out, if so what are people replacing VME systems with?

Thanks

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Reply to
bb74
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My experience, as a designer of VME I/O modules, is that VME's still going pretty strong. I'll agree with you that the 68K is pretty dead as a controller; though if anyone's doing Coldfire based controllers you can probably get away with minimal reprogramming. Most people seem to have shifted to x86 based single-boards, or are using standard PCs with PCI or PCIe to VME bridges, either of which will require a whole mess of reprogramming.

If you'll pardon a quick advert, we've got both a PCIe/VME bridge and a

32 channel ADC, both slated for completion by the end of the year.
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NG spamming is rude, but if you'd be interested in either of these then flip the company address in my email address around and shoot me a message, I'd be happy to talk to you about whatever you need.

--
Rob Gaddi, Highland Technology
Email address is currently out of order
Reply to
Rob Gaddi

6

That's what we did 20 years ago.

ed

Nothing. Integrations density are high enough to do it with single board controller. Parallel bus systems are less important nowaday. Most communications are serial (USB, firewire, SATA, etc.)

Reply to
linnix

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While I agree with linnix that parallel busses are dying out, since there was a "coming soon" offer let me come with mine, too.

We use the MPC5200B - which is power architecture (PPC) and to which migration of 68K sources is easier than with coldfire (though there is no object code compatibility, the 68k/cpu32 sources assemble into power object code using our VPA toolchain under DPS - DPS being a fullblown OS with RTOS latencies and a tiny footprint).

Our contact info is also available and obviously we could also be interested to "come soon" with something to replace your 100+ systems.

Dimiter

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Reply to
dp

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I guess Motorola/Freescale are the favorite processors of the day. We are in fact using the Kinetics (ARM M4) to replace a PPC board, due to the power hungry PPC chip The single chip kinetics can replace the whole VME processor board plus A2D (33 16 bits) and I/O (100 ports). Just need external D2A chips.

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Reply to
linnix

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Which is this hungry PPC? The one we use (MPC5200B) is not that hungry, somewhat above a watt and it does manage nearly 200M 64-bit FP MACs/S (should be twice that with 32 bits but we don't use such, MAC becomes really useful well above 32 bit results anyway :-) ). I have been seeing really low power ARM parts but the cost for the low power - while at 120 or 90 nm - should be less horsepowers. Not that I have checked them seriously, that is. Still not attractive enough to make me consider porting VPA & DPS.

Dimiter

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Reply to
dp

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Plus external SDRAM, I/Os, A2D and running Linux. Then they figure out that Linux is not really necessary anyway. We only need 10 16 bits A2D and 1 D2A, so single chip Kinetics work just fine.

Reply to
linnix

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Well we do need the DDRAM (buffers at high sampling rates, networking) but there is no linux in the picture here :-). We run DPS, usually we do include a HDD in our systems but it boots beautifully off a 2M flash, windows, shell, gamma spectrometry application, internet, VNC accessible etc.,

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. No way fitting that in a single-chip MCU nowadays, it just needs megabytes of RAM, networking etc. And the SDMA (aka bestcomm) on that chip is really really flexible and powerful, does its fair share of many jobs.

Dimiter

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The customer have no networking and interface requirements (except for initial setup). So, they were oversold on the Linux solution. They do want a 32G uSD, but i have a feeling that it might end up as a CF for performance).

Reply to
linnix

Have a look at the catalog of

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. They are still manufacturing VME boards which were obsoleted by their original manufacturer decades ago. At least choosing a new board from one of the manufacturers from which they take over long term support should help you in the future. We have systems that uses old 68K Motorola VME boards which we can still order brand new from them. Fairly expensive, but a lot less than having to port to new hardware.

For replacing the existing VME board, I would go for something with a Freescale processor. These days the actual core is all but irrelevant. (Unless code was written in assembler) It is porting of the peripheral code which takes time. I have yet to find any other manufacturer which can compete with the richness and completeness of the Freescale peripherals. When doing a quick scan of the list of peripherals available on most other manufacturer's MCUs, one need to put an OR between many of the listed peripherals. With the Freescale stuff one can generally asume an AND between the listed peripherals.

Regards Anton Erasmus

Reply to
Anton Erasmus

Agree. It is difficult to find other MCU with 16 bits A2D, which is the deal maker/breaker for us. However, from the spec fine-prints, we might not get much more than 13 or 14 bits actual resolution. It's still better than others, and the customer is sold on this. At least Freescale did something right.

Reply to
linnix

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Why not go x86 now? verslogic,,

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, and others have and will support you for a very long time too.(WinSystems is 30 years old and is an employee-owned company. Their products may offer more horsepower than you seem to need however.)

Reply to
1 Lucky Texan

Thanks to all for your help.

It looks like a SBC solution is the way to go as we will also be building new systems.

What do you guys think about using the TI LM3S9B96 ARM Cortex M3? I have the dev kit and have had a chance to play around with it. This seems like an attractive option as I believe it has all the features I need and the development tools are free (I already have a licensed copy of Code Composer Studio). It has SAFERTOS in ROM and there is a lwip port for networking. I'll have to add I/O expanders and external ADCs and DACs. I'll have to use external RAM as the onboard 96K SRAM is not going to be near enough for the networking buffers.

I'm looking into the Freescale micros and also like what I see.

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Reply to
bb74

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TI/LM is good, but FSC/Kinetics is better in analog (PK51 with integrated op amp and tri-amp as well). The Cortex M4 DSP instructions won't hurt either, but i haven't got into the detail yet. Yes, i got all the LMI tools as well, but can't just make decisions based on the tools alone.

Reply to
linnix

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