General Purpose full size PCI Interface Card

General:

Typical modules include interfaces to ARINC-429, ARINC-629 and RS-422. Each module can be designed to support up to 8 Rx or 8 Tx channels.

The card provides configuration registers that allow the host to:

The card supports the resident interface modules with:

The card is designed to be used in a "Plug-in and Play" environment which is made possible, not only by the choice of PCI interface, but also by the provision of various identification and module present registers. These include:

Using these registers the host can detect the presence of the card, its resident modules and its connector, determine if this is consistent with system requirements and respond accordingly by configuring the system or reporting system deficiencies. The cards do not require any specific hardware configuration other than fitting the correct modules and connectors. Any errors in the fitting of Modules and connectors can easily be detected by the software and appropriate warnings reported.

Cyclic Data Buffers:

The SyPCI-M4 card provides high speed PCI interfacing to 32 Cyclic Data buffers, eight of which are available for each resident module.

Each channel associated with a module is automatically assigned to be either a Tx Channel or a Rx Channel.

The user is free to read and write to any of the Cyclic Buffers independent of their type (Tx or Rx). However, the Cyclic Buffer data transfer system only responds in strict accordance to the channel type. That is it will transfer data, written to a Tx Cyclic Buffer, to the appropriate module channel and write received data to the corresponding Rx Cyclic Buffer.

The Cyclic Buffers are controlled according to simple rules. The buffer read and write pointers can be read by the host to assist in the data transfer process.

In practice, the user writes data for transmission to consecutive long word locations in the Cyclic Buffer. Only valid bytes are transmitted.

Receive data is automatically written to consecutive byte locations in the cyclic buffer.

Interrupt Facilities:

PCI interrupts can be generated for both DMA and Module events. Interrupt Control and status registers are provided for enabling interrupts and determining which events occur.

Module Control:

Separate user manuals are provided for each module. Modules have a maximum of 8 channels that can be used for either transmission or reception of data. Modules may also have registers and memory accessible to the user. Access to this register and memory address space is relatively slow compared with that of the Cyclic Buffers and is therefore only intended for configuration and control purposes.