Mamba-a programmable broadband multimedia interface board

The article describes a design approach and hardware implementation for a high speed interface card, capable of transmitting and receiving 216 MBit/sec raw DVB/ATSC data via an asynchronous serial or synchronous parallel interface (ASI/SPI). The local side interface is CompactPCI (CPCI). On-board performance bottlenecks will be largely avoided by utilising the new zero bus turnaround RAM technology as primary buffer memory along with a sophisticated state-of-the-art buffer management system. A commonly used processor from Intel, often found in embedded systems, builds the processing core of the system, running a lean real-time operating system for optimal performance gain. Full software configuration possibilities make this hardware design flexible for a wide variety of applications. Mechanical and electrical constraints like HotSwap capability, given by the CPCI standard, make the hardware robust enough for nearly all operation environments and fail-safe through redundant setup potential.