March 2009 – Concurrent Technologies has released the PP 66x/071 family of 6U CompactPCI boards, one of the first product ranges to feature the quad core 2.13 GHz Intel® Xeon® processor L5518 or the dual core 2.0 GHz Intel® Xeon® processor L5508, both of which were released today by Intel.  Based on 45nm process technology and the new Intel® microarchitecture, formerly codenamed “Nehalem”, both processors are from the Intel® embedded roadmap which offers at least seven year availability.   With up to 64 Gbytes of DDR3-1066 ECC SDRAM, two 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports, and several SAS and SATA300 disk interfaces, the PP 66x/071 family has one of the highest specifications available to 6U CompactPCI users today; the boards are particularly suitable for CPU intensive processing applications within the telecommunications, defence and homeland security market sectors.

The PP 66x/071 family is based on the Intel® Xeon® 5500 Platform, consisting of the Intel® Xeon processor, the Intel® 5520 I/O Hub and the Intel® ICH10R I/O Controller Hub.  The Intel Xeon 5500 platform provides impressive performance-per-watt and integrates the memory controller into the processor for reduced memory latency. The Intel Xeon processors feature Intel® QuickPath Technology and Intel® Turbo Boost Technology which, along with Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology, deliver top performance for bandwidth-intensive applications. Intel QuickPath Technology provides a high-speed, point-to-point connection between the microprocessor and the Intel® 5520 I/O Hub.  Intel Turbo Boost Technology elevates performance for specific workloads by increasing processor core frequency.

Glen Fawcett, CEO for Concurrent Technologies,  commented, “As one of the first companies to announce a product based on the Intel® Xeon® 5500 platform from Intel’s embedded roadmap, we have re-emphasised our commitment to introduce new high performance products to the critical embedded market.  This latest product will provide the additional performance our customers are asking for.”

“The L5518 and L5508 processors provide the performance, low power and robust thermal profiles required for many communications and embedded applications,” said Steve Price, marketing director, Intel Performance Processor Division.  “New single board computers, such as the Concurrent Technologies family of 6U CompactPCI boards, have the high performance memory, networking and storage interfaces to provide an appealing solution for processing intensive applications such as deep packet inspection.”

The PP 66x/071 products benefit from the Intel Xeon processor’s large last level on-die cache of 8 Mbytes and its ability to directly access (via a 1066 MHz memory bus) up to 64 Gbytes of DDR3-1066 ECC SDRAM in four DIMM sockets.  The processor has a very fast I/O data path to the Intel 5520 I/O Hub via the 20 Gbytes/sec Intel Quick Path Interface.

For high performance I/O, control and data processing flexibility, the PP 66x/071 supports, via the front panel, a PMC/XMC site (133 MHz PCI-X and up to x8 PCI Express® lanes) as well as optional I/O interconnections via two 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports (copper or optical).  The rear connectors provide an interface to an optional on-board 8 port hardware RAID Controller supporting SAS and SATA300 drives.  The PP 66x/071 can operate as a system controller board (left slot or right slot), a peripheral board or as a satellite board (blade). Support is also provided for PICMG® 2.16 (Ethernet fabric), PICMG 2.9 (IPMI) and PICMG 2.1 (hot swap); the CompactPCI® backplane interface operates at 33/66MHz PCI signalling speeds.