Business Services Industry

Ariel Open Hardware Architecture enhances DSP COTS capabilities

Business Wire, Dec 2, 1996

CRANBURY, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 2, 1996--Ariel Corp. (NASDAQ:ADSP) announced OHA (Open Hardware Architecture), a new approach to digital signal processing (DSP) system design that enables defense contractors to utilize commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) DSP technology without compromising performance, functional density or flexibility.

OHA targets designers who are utilizing COTS-based DSP board- level products to meet stringent time-to-market deadlines, reduce costs and comply with government mandates.

OHA is an architectural approach designed to facilitate easy customization of COTS DSP baseboards, giving designers flexible access to key baseboard resources and DSP signals.

``With OHA,'' explains Bill Chiechi, manager of Ariel's High Performance Systems Group, ``designers of DSP-based military systems can fulfill their COTS requirements with off-the-shelf baseboards, while satisfying application-specific memory, I/O and coprocessor requirements with custom modules that have unimpeded access to the baseboard's DSPs, memory and other key resources.''

What makes OHA unique is its flexibility. Most DSP board suppliers facilitate baseboard access by providing mezzanine interfaces with rigid pinouts and communication protocols that diminish performance and restrict baseboard access.

To address this bottleneck, designers must frequently make compromises such as purchasing more powerful processor cards or backing off on critical I/O specifications.

OHA does not impose a particular protocol or pinout. Rather, it utilizes high-density connectors to give designers unimpeded access to key baseboard DSP signals -- not just the address and data buses, but parallel and serial I/O ports, interrupt lines, control signals and clock signals.

``The result,'' explained Ariel Chief Executive Officer Tony Agnello, ``is an approach to DSP system design that melds the cost and time-to-market advantages of COTS with the performance and flexibility of a full custom design. At Ariel, we call it COTS without compromise.''

To address standard COTS I/O requirements, Ariel has created a subset of OHA called OpenIO, which gives designers optimized I/O right out of the box. OpenIO is a processor-independent, high-speed bus interface that connects real-world I/O to advanced DSP systems.

The OpenIO specification provides 32 bits of data and address along with a generalized definition of DSP-specific signals such as comm ports, link ports, serial ports and interrupts. This approach provides maximum throughput plus I/O design reusability.

Ariel provides a pair of OpenIO baseboard access sites on its VMEbus-based HyperHydra V100 DSP boards, which feature eight Texas Instruments TMS320C44 floating point DSPs. Ariel will also provide two OpenIO interfaces on its soon-to-be-announced HammerHead V200 board, a second-generation VMEbus DSP board that features multiple Analog Devices SHARC processors.

Ariel will also be announcing a family of OpenIO modules. The first will implement Interactive Circuits and Systems' (ICS) Front Panel Data Port (FPDP) interface, a 32-bit parallel port that supports data rates of up to 160 Mbytes/sec (at 40 MHz) at distances up to 10 feet.

The FPDP interface will give users of Ariel baseboards access to a broad family of high-speed, multichannel VMEbus-based A/D, D/A and sonar I/O cards, which also come equipped with FPDP interfaces. Other OpenIO modules include 12-bit 50MHz ADC, 14-bit 2 MHz ADC and 16-bit sigma-delta ADC/DAC.

The OpenIO specification is available from Ariel free of charge. Contact Ariel for more information about OHA or the OpenIO specification.