Embedded board goes to extremes

An Eurotech product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Aug 4, 2006

Arcom has released an extended temperature range version of its established Vulcan PC/104 compatible single board computer.

Arcom has released an extended temperature range version of its established Vulcan PC/104 compatible single board computer.

The Vulcan is based on the Intel 533MHz low power IXP425 XScale network processor, making it ideal for secure embedded communications systems.

The extended temperature range of -40 to +85C permits deployment into remote unattended installations that can be subject to environmental extremes.

The Vulcan provides two Ethernet 10/100baseT controllers which can achieve a line-rate of 100Mbyte/s simultaneously.

The IXP425 enhances Ethernet communication security by using hardware accelerated encryption (AES, DES, 3DES) and authentication (SHA-1, MD5).

Even with encryption the controllers can achieve line-rates of 80MB/s.

The Vulcan has four high speed USB 2.0 ports, four serial ports (RS-232/RS-422/485), battery backed SRAM, RTC and a GPIO port.

The combination of 64Mbyte of soldered DRAM and 16 or 32Mbyte Flash memory, along with the high speed local I/O makes this an ideal platform for low power, secure wired/wireless remote terminal units, industrial network gateways and data acquisition systems.

The CompactFlash (CF+) port accepts memory and inexpensive Wi-Fi cards while PC/104 bus expansion is provided for custom I/O baseboards or off-the-shelf PC/104 modules.

For security sensitive products, Vulcan includes a tamper switch input to detect enclosure intrusion and a unique 48bit silicon serial number for asset tracking.

A comprehensive embedded Linux development kit is available for the Vulcan, featuring a compact and optimised Flash-based implementation of the GNU/Linux operating system based on the proven 2.6 kernel.

Included is the 533MHz Vulcan single board computer fitted with 64Mbyte DRAM, 16Mbyte of Flash and 256Kbyte SRAM, along with the Vulcan ICE (industrial compact enclosure), a serial and Ethernet cable set and a quick-start manual.