OREANDA-NEWS. June 05, 2012.  GE Intelligent Platforms today announced at the FACE (Future Airborne Capability Environment) Exposition (Patuxent River Naval Air Museum, Lexington Park, MD) the PMCCG1 rugged PMC graphics mezzanine. Designed specifically for retrofit to legacy applications that take advantage of the PMC form factor, the PMCCG1 is capable of being deployed in the harsh environments typical of the modern battlefield. Typical uses include HMI (human/machine interface) applications such as mission computing and cockpit displays on-board military vehicles where high quality, artifact-free video is required.

The PMCCG1 is available in five ruggedization levels, from benign for development environments through to wide temperature (-40 єC to +85 єC) conduction-cooled.

At its heart is the S3 2300E GPU, which provides the optimum balance between high graphics performance and low power consumption/heat dissipation. It features the PCI-X interface, enabling the PMCCG1 to deliver significantly improved performance when compared to previous generations of PMC graphics cards with their limited 32-bit, 66MHz operation. Additionally, the S3 2300E provides the long-term availability and support that are prerequisites for many military programs.

The PMCCG1 offers an optimum upgrade path for users of GE’s PMCGA4 graphics card, while also delivering a compelling option for new customers whose application requires the PMC form factor.

“GE has a long history of developing COTS graphics solutions for a wide variety of land- and airborne platforms, large numbers of which have been successfully deployed over many years - and the PMCCG1 continues that tradition,” said Rod Rice, General Manager, Military & Aerospace Products at GE Intelligent Platforms. “There are still many programs and applications that cannot use the XMC form factor for graphics – and for those customers, the PMC-based PMCCG1 provides an optimum combination of backwards compatibility and leading edge performance.”

GE’s graphics card mezzanine solutions are being demonstrated at the FACE Exposition by Presagis, who provide COTS modeling, simulation and embedded graphics solutions to the aerospace and defense markets, and who recently announced SeaWind and SeaWind-178 OpenGL software driver support for the S3 2300E GPU.

“Digital moving maps, 3D, video and sensor input are clearly the forefront of development in graphics applications in embedded computing solutions for the defense industry,” said Nick Giannias, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Presagis. “Presagis Open GL SeaWind software drivers are engineered for safety, as well as performance. By coupling the S3 2300E GPU with Presagis SeaWind drivers, we are enabling customers to fully exploit graphics technology in embedded applications."

The PMCCG1 is equipped with 256 Mbytes of DDR2 memory and dual independent graphics channels. It is capable of resolutions up to 1,600 x 1,200.

OpenGL 1.5 and DirectX 9.0c drivers for Windows® & Linux® running on an Intel® host card are available from S3. A VxWorks® OpenGL ES driver for PowerPC® or Intel is available from GE.