FPGA-based module

Diamond Systems has announced GPIO-MM, a flexible and reconfigurable PC/104 digital I/O module based on a Xilinx Spartan II FPGA.

Use of an FPGA to implement the digital I/O logic allows the GPIO-MM hardware to be reprogrammed, in the field if necessary, to serve multiple PC/104 I/O applications with different digital I/O requirements.

GPIO-MM uses onboard flash memory to store the FPGA code. Memory may be reprogrammed using a JTAG interface.

The initial release of the module includes FPGA code to configure GPIO-MM with 48 programmable-direction digital I/O pins based on 8255 cores, eight fixed-input signals, eight fixed-output signals and 10 16-bit counter/timers based on 9513 cores, supported by a 40 MHz clock.

Three pin headers provide a total of 100 I/O pins. This initial configuration is backwards compatible with Diamond's Quartz-MM and Garnet-MM series of fixed configuration PC/104 I/O boards.

An onboard EEPROM provides 256 bytes of user-accessible storage, typically used for configuration information. GPIO MM operates over an extended range of -40 to +85°C.