BittWare and CorEdge Networks Announce Partnership

Launch of RapidTCA Development System provides a flexible, portable, low cost environment for AMC and MicroTCA development

OXFORDSHIRE, UK -- BittWare, Inc., the leading supplier of hybrid signal processing board-level solutions, announced today at the Evolving Architecture Standards technical conference their partnership with CorEdge Networks and the release of their RapidTCA Development System, a unique development environment for Advanced Mezzanine Card (AdvancedMC") and MicroTCA designs. To facilitate this partnership, BittWare has entered into a Worldwide Value Added Reseller (VAR) agreement for CorEdge Networks' PicoTCA development chassis and backplanes. BittWare's RapidTCA Development System combines the PicoTCA 1U stand-alone test and development system from CorEdge Networks, with the hybrid signal processing capabilities of BittWare's AdvancedMC products. The flexible and portable design of BittWare's RapidTCA Development System coupled with its low cost, enables customers to quickly and cost-effectively bring their AdvancedMC and MicroTCA designs to life.

"BittWare is a leading AdvancedMC supplier and CorEdge Networks is very pleased that our PicoTCA product line is now offered as a bundle to BittWare customers," says Willam Chu, President and Chief Marketing Officer, CorEdge Networks. "Our low cost, easy-to-use, compact and scalable PicoTCA platform provides customers with a proven environment to leverage BittWare's GX-AMC and B2-AMC for developing application like wireless communications."

"CorEdge Networks offers a unique product with its family of PicoTCA development systems for customers who require a fast and cost effective means to get to market with ATCA/AMC/MicroTCA compliant solutions," stated Darren Taylor, Senior VP of Sales and Marketing at BittWare. "Combined with one or more of BittWare's Hybrid Signal processing AcvancedMCs based on Altera's high-end FPGAs, customers can realize significant cost savings without having to incur the potentially huge cost of creating their own development environment."

About the RapidTCA Development Kit

The RapidTCA Developers System is comprised of CorEdge Network's 2 payload slot, 1U PicoTCA stand-alone test and development system, and BittWare's DSP21k development software. Customers have the option to also purchase one or both of BittWare's hybrid signal processing AdvancedMCs.

The RapidTCA Development System provides a unique development environment by emulating an actual AdvancedMC or MicroTCA system, providing front panel access to all AdvancedMCs in the system. The MicroTCA backplane supports two single-wide or one double-wide extended full-height AdvancedMC, and does not require a switching mechanism due to its cross-connected base channel, fabric and extended fabric connectivity. AdvancedMC specifications AMC.0, AMC.1, AMC.2, AMC.3, and AMC.4 are all supported.

A CorEdge Networks System/Power Controller (SPC), which occupies a third slot on the backplane and controls all backplane power, provides quick power up to all AdvancedMCs in a MicroTCA-like environment.
The entire system is encased in a 1U high bench top chassis with clear, removable top and bottom covers for easy probe access to the AdvancedMCs while the system is up and running. The chassis also includes dual front replaceable push/pull integrated air filter, fan, fan trays, and an external 100-240VAC to 48VDC power supply.

About BittWare's AdvancedMC Boards

BittWare's family of AdvancedMCs includes:

(i) The GX-AMC, an AdvancedMC that uses an Altera® Stratix® II GX FPGA to provide unparalleled flexibility, ideal for the development and deployment of a variety of systems, including wireless infrastructure. Every AMC port aside from port 0 is connected to the Stratix II GX FPGA and BittWare's ATLANTiS" framework, allowing designers to determine exactly how to route the I/O, with a variety of protocols supported on 11 SerDes ports and eight LVDS ports. To extend the inherent flexibility of AMC, the GXAM includes a front panel mezzanine site with 76 LVDS pairs and four SerDes, further enabling designers to adapt the GXAM to their complex and changing requirements.

(ii) The B2-AMC, a full-height, single wide AMC ideal for use in AdvancedTCA®, MicroTCA, or custom systems. Using the superscalar architecture of the ADSP-TS201 TigerSHARC® DSPs, the B2-AMC provides an unprecedented 14.4 GFLOPs and 57.5 GOPS of processing power. The Stratix II FPGA implements BittWare's ATLANTiS framework and the fat pipe interface, seamlessly integrating the DSP processing power with Serial RapidIO", or any other switch fabric (PCI Express", GigE, or XAUI" (10 GigE)).

Complete Development Support

BittWare offers a complete suite of development tools to make developing and debugging AdvancedMC and MicroTCA applications easy and efficient. These software tools provide host interface libraries, a wide variety of diagnostic utilities and configuration tools, and debug tools. This tool set is comprised of BittWare's DSP21k Toolkit, DSP21k Porting Kit, BittWare Target, and TS-Lib.

Availability

The RapidTCA Development System is available today. Prices start at $9,995 and vary by configuration.