Quad Serial FPDP Data Recorder & Playback System 4 channel sFPDP Application Targeted Pre-programmed Recording System

Many embedded systems designers who develop signal intelligence, RADAR, SONAR or image processing applications are standardizing on Serial Front Panel Data Port (sFPDP) as a method of transferring digitized data between sensors and processors at rates of up to 2.5 Gbps per channel. A significant number of these applications require a quick and cost effective way to permanently store and retrieve captured data using the sFPDP protocol. To address this need, VMETRO has designed, configured and delivered a VME-based quad channel sFPDP data recorder. This application targeted pre-programmed recorder is compatible with VMETRO’s entire range of data recording hardware and software products. The system supports recording and playback of up to four channels of fibre-optic sFPDP data via Fibre Channel disk arrays at a guaranteed aggregate data rate of up to 800Mbytes per second per 6U VME slot. Increased channel densities can be achieved through the addition of duplicate system configurations in the same chassis which will result in a linear increase in throughput performance to 1.6Gbytes/sec and beyond.

This application targeted pre-programmed recorder is compatible with VMETRO’s entire range of data recording hardware and software products. The system supports recording and playback of up to four channels of fibre-optic sFPDP data via Fibre Channel disk arrays at a guaranteed aggregate data rate of up to 800Mbytes per second per 6U VME slot. Increased channel densities can be achieved through the addition of duplicate system configurations in the same chassis which will result in a linear increase in throughput performance to 1.6Gbytes/sec and beyond.

sFPDP data is captured (or played back) via a VMETRO SFM quad channel PMC which supports PCI-X data transfers at 133MHz. This module is mounted on a VMETRO Vortex VR-6211 data recorder engine. The Vortex VR-6211 has been designed from the outset as a custom programmable data recording and playback engine. Data recording centric features that differentiate the Vortex VR-6211 include tuned 133 MHz PCI-X interfaces between the PMC sites and the onboard PowerPC 440SP, and two built in Fibre Channel interfaces. The Vortex VR-6211 recording engine hosts VMETRO’s Vortex data recording software which facilitates DMA transfers between the sFPDP PMC/XMC and a Fibre Channel PMC, provides I/O and disk management and hosts an XML-RPC user interface with platform independent control. A Fibre Channel PMC installed in the spare PMC site on the Vortex VR-6211 provides the additional bandwidth to the supplied sixteen 300GByte drive SBOD, enabling the 800MByte/sec throughput numbers to be achieved. When configured with VMETRO’s 3U SBOD, a total capacity of 4.8TB, the sFPDP data recorder can provide up to 100 minutes of continuous data recording.

The quad sFPDP data recorder becomes truly effective when coupled with the VMETRO Vortex OpenMDR software environment. The Vortex OpenMDR software represents over 40 man-years of data recording software development. By utilizing the supplied web based graphical user interface, end users leverage this key software expertise and get data recording applications up and running in a matter of hours without application level programming.

With the release of the quad sFPDP Data Recorder, a sFPDP software IP module has been added to the Vortex OpenMDR development and runtime library. Configuring the sFPDP channels, the Vortex VR-6211 and the Fibre Channel interfaces is accomplished entirely within the web based GUI. From this easy to use GUI, any combination of up to four channels of sFPDP per 6U VME slot can be configured for data recording or data files hosted on the SAN storage can be retrieved for playback.

The sFPDP data recorder allows full control of each sFPDP channel, with each channel able to be uniquely configured to support different loop configuration modes, CRC checking, wait-for-sync, start input wait time and input wait time. Once configured, the settings are permanently stored and require no resetting when the system is restarted or deployed.

Many applications require the data to be manipulated or analyzed while being recorded or during playback. The OpenMDR software provides full access to a well defined and fully documented interface to the data before it is written to or read from disk. Alternatively, VMETRO’s Application Engineering team is available for system customization if the time or talent is not available locally for application customization.

Because the quad sFPDP data recorder is designed to work with proven Fibre Channel disk drives, the identical recording application can be prototyped in a laboratory environment and easily transitioned to a deployed environment. Compatible low cost JBOD and SBOD rotating disk media can be used during development. More rugged environments employ the sFPDP recording engine coupled to either rugged Fibre Channel-based rotating media storage in the VMETRO SANbric, or to the VMDRIVE, a FLASH storage based technology.