Product/Service

General Micro Systems today announced the Navigator, a high-performance, hot-swappable CompactPCI CPU board for high-availability telecommunications applications such as web and Internet servers. Combining a 1-GHz Pentium III CPU with up to 256 kbytes of no-wait-state cache and 1 Gbyte of main memory, the Navigator features two Fast Ethernet ports, integrated mass storage options for both rotating and diskless media, dual Ultra DMA-33 IDE interfaces, and a pair of USB ports. The Navigator also provides up to five PMC slots, which can be used to customize the board with a variety of high-performance graphics, mass storage, and WAN interface options.

The Navigator is available with a choice of field-upgradeable Pentium III Celeron or Coppermine-256 processors. The Celeron processor, ideal for low-power applications, features a clock speed of 366-500 MHz, and is equipped with 128 kbytes of on-die, no-wait-state cache. The Coppermine-256 processor is ideal for high-performance applications. Featuring a clock speed of 500 MHz to 1 GHz, the Coppermine-256 is equipped with 256 kbytes of on-die, no-wait-state cache. Both processors are equipped with up to 1 Gbyte of main memory, which they access via a high-speed Front Side Bus (66 MHz for Celeron; 100 MHz for Coppermine). This field-upgradeable memory is packaged as a pair of SO-DIMM modules.

The Navigator employs sub-notebook technology to deliver the highest functional density of any Compact PCI CPU board on the market today. Navigator comes standard with two 10/100Base-Tx Ethernet interfaces, dual Ultra DMA-33 IDE hard drive interfaces, a pair of USB ports, two PMC expansion slots, two comm ports, a printer port, a floppy port, and interfaces for both a mouse and keyboard. The Navigator also provides integrated single-slot mass storage options for both rotating and non-rotating media. Included is a 2.5-inch IDE hard drive, which supports capacities in excess of 10 Gbytes, a 1-Gbyte IDE flash drive, and 144 Mbytes of optional Disk-On-Chip Flash Disk, which can be configured as a bootable drive for disk-less systems.

The Navigator's two PMC (PCI Mezzanine Card) sites, one of which supports rear-panel I/O, give OEMs a flexible, inexpensive way to add plug-and-play communications, graphics, mass storage, and industrial I/O options to their CompactPCI systems without occupying additional CompactPCI slots. To support additional PMC expansion, the Navigator provides a PMC expansion module with three PMC sites. This module, when plugged into Navigator's PMC expansion connector, gives the board a total of five PMC slots, while occupying only one additional CompactPCI slot.

Navigator's keyboard/mouse, USB 1, and Coml ports are available via the front panel. The Com2 port, second Ethernet port, second USB port, and IDE interface are routed to the rear panel. The Navigator is also available with an 80-mm rear panel transition I/O module, which facilitates a direct connection to IDE hard drives, CDROM, Compact Flash devices, printers, and other 1/O devices using standard cabling. The transition module also provides a PIM (PMC Interface Module) interface for creating custom 110 interfaces.

General Micro Systems, Inc., P.O. Box 3689, 8358 Maple Place, Rancho Cucamonga, CA 91730. Tel: 909-980-4863; Fax: 909-987-4863.

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