The CPCI-786 dual-processor CompactPCI board-level embedded computing platform from Force Computers is based on dual low-voltage Intel Pentium III processors.

As a PICMG 2.16-compliant system-slot board platform, the CPCI-786 server blade provides energy-efficient and high-performance processing capability resulting in cooler operation and more 'MIPS per square cm' than standard server-farm rack-mounts, when populating a Force Centellis CO 21000-12U or Centellis CO 25000-9U system.

The CPCI-786 offers a CompactPCI Packet-Switching Backplane (cPSB) solution for next-generation switch-fabric architecture applications. In early February 2002, Force qualified its single Pentium III processor server blade, the CPCI-736, in Hewlett-Packard's blade server chassis, and Force plans to support the programme with a number of server blades and system platforms — including NEBS Level 3-tested solutions.

By providing dual low-voltage Intel Pentium III processors from Intel's embedded road-map on the industry-standard CompactPCI form-factor, the CPCI-786 server blade provides a continuous upgrade path for existing Pentium processor-based products, decreases time-to-market, saves development costs and offers product longevity support.

With PICMG 2.1 compliance, the CPCI-786 enables hot swapping of blades without requiring powering down of system operations. In addition, the PICMG 2.16 cPSB-compatible CPCI-786 has up to 4GBytes interleave-interfaced SDRAM for maximum memory bandwidth.

The board has a 30Gbyte IDE hard disk drive, IPMI system management support (PICMG 2.9), one PMC slot (64bit/66MHz PCI capable) for high-bandwidth I/O (i.e. Fibre Channel, Gigabit Ethernet).

Published in Embedded Systems (Europe) April 2002