Home >> Systems Integration :: SMART Systems >> SMARTpac 600
SMARTpac™ 600 Data Acquisition Server
The revolutionary new SMART Systems from SKY Computers® are the first high performance embedded
computers built to enable quick application implementation and high application availability.
The SMARTpac™ 600 Data Acquisition Server, based on SKY's SMART Systems Architecture,
combines widely accepted software, hardware, interconnect standards and open source software.
The SMARTpac 600 is optimally designed for data acquisition and management services. The SMARTpac 600
utilizes a 6 ¼ inch (3 ½ U) slide mountable chassis that can be configured with up to six uniprocessor
or dual-processor SMP PCC AltiVec compute blades. The SMARTpac 600 utilizes PCI-X, a widely accepted
I/O standard, allowing customers the opportunity and flexibility to leverage hundreds of third party
PCI I/O cards available in the industry. The system provides six PCI-X adapter slides, one per compute
blade. Four InfiniBand connections are available on the rear of the chassis for inter-chassis connection
and scaling or direct connection to a broader InfiniBand fabric. The SMARTpac 600 is ideal as the
front-end data acquisition and processing engine for applications of large, real time data streams.
SMARTpac 600 and SMARTpac 1200 Compute Blades
SMARTpac single processor and dual processor SMP compute blades are available for members of the SMARTpac
family. Since the SMARTpac 600 and SMARTpac 1200 share an identical systems architecture, allowing the
single and dual compute blades to be used in either the SMARTpac 600 or SMARTpac 1200. Both compute
blades utilize the PCC 7447 1GHz AltiVec processor. Sixty-four MB of flash memory provides fast boot
time by allowing the application to be pre-loaded in flash. Two GB of SDRAM is accessed over the 266 MHz
local memory bus.
SMARTpac Systems Architecture
The SMART Systems Architecture consists of a development environment that provides quick application
construction and refinement, and a runtime environment that enables high application availability. This
system-wide architecture is designed to deliver high compute performance and interconnect bandwidth. Built
on open source software and standard technologies such as Linux, InfiniBand™, MPI, VSIPL and Corba,
SMART Systems reduce development time and accelerate time to deployment.
The SMART Architecture is built with an intelligent fabric that can be configured to react to changes
in its environment. By employing tightly integrated hardware and software components that continually
monitor the health of the system the SMART Architecture enables high application availability. Combined
with proven development tools and libraries, SMART Systems are high performance systems that are easier
and less expensive to develop, deploy and maintain.
With the SMART Architecture, SKY can for the first time, give embedded developers the robustness,
resiliency, and ease of integration provided by a standards-based, open software architecture. The SMART
Architecture is based on two architectural tenants:
-
Standards-based environment provides a wide choice of tools and libraries
giving developers true application portability and vendor independence.
-
Open source software makes developing embedded applications easier and
more cost effective than ever before.
The SMART Development Environment includes standard integrated development environments, a SKY Optimizing
Pre-Processor to optimize cache performance as well as math, and POSIX libraries. The SMART Runtime
Environment provides a standards-based framework on which applications can be built to be highly available,
with the ability to respond to changes within the system or the environment.
InfiniBand: High Performance and Superior Reliability
InfiniBand is the backbone of the SMART System architecture providing high bandwidth, very low
latency to maximize system performance, system reliability, application resiliency, and high application
availability. Built in security features and an adaptable network of continuous node discovery addresses
hardware, software, and application errors by providing a self-reliant, self-repairing interconnect for
the system. The serial technology used in InfiniBand provides performance that exceeds 3 GB/sec. InfiniBand
technology is ideal for high performance embedded applications because it provides the low processor overhead,
simplified network management, reliability, availability and serviceability, required for high performance
computing applications. No other interconnect fabric is as robust. As a SMART fabric with supporting
software, it provides high performance embedded users with high application availability which ultimately
translates to lower cost of ownership and quicker deployment of embedded systems.
Reduced development and deployment risk are a primary requirement of today's mission-critical applications
such as military and defense, homeland security, and software defined radio. SKY has taken the lead in
addressing the demands of the embedded computer user for quick development and deployment of applications.
By leveraging the unique capabilities of our intelligent system architecture SKY is the only company in the
high performance embedded systems market able to meet these needs. SKY's SMART Systems family of embedded
systems delivers the highest levels of reliability, availability, scalability, resilience and performance
required to develop and deploy mission-critical applications into embedded environments.
Related Links:
Military & Defense Application Brief
Industrial Inspection Application Brief
SMARTpac 600 Specifications
InfiniBand Fabric
High-Performance Embedded Servers
SMART Systems Product Brief
Building HPEC Systems for Performance and Fault Resiliency with InfiniBand
Real Time Linux
High Application Availability
