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Momentum Computer, an innovative developer specializing in quick turnaround of high-performance board-level solutions has been singled out by IBM to provide the Evaluation Platform for IBM's newest PowerPC offering, the 64-bit 970FX processor. Momentum's ATX-style motherboard, designed for and in conjunction with IBM Microelectronics, will provide developers with a unique insight to the performance and functionality of these new processors. As part of the 970FX Evaluation Platform Program, Momentum will provide support, documentation and downloads, as well as on-line forums in addition to the board itself. This will include initial demonstration of capabilities as well as provision for schematics, gerbers and open-source code. Available in two different packages, Momentum will offer the evaluation platform as either: -- A full system with dual 1.4GHz 970FX processors, 1GB DDR SDRAM, 400W ATX power supply, 20GB IDE hard drive including the 970 file system and CD-ROM drive in a clear acrylic ATX case, or -- A development net-boot system with dual 1.4GHz 970FX processors and 400W ATX power supply mounted on an acrylic support plate that leaves the board exposed for easy probing and diagnostics. Both configurations include boot images, scripts and busybox file system pre-burned into the M-Systems' DiskOnChip(R), the Design Package CD and ongoing access to Momentum's update server with the latest soft-copy version of all information from the 970FX evaluation package. The Design Package CD includes schematics in both Orcad 9.2.3 and PDF formats, bills of material, gerber files, monitor source code, startup code, application notes and assembly drawings. "We are honored that IBM selected Momentum to provide the Evaluation Platform for this exciting new chip and look forward to working with the embedded development community. It will be fascinating to watch the applications that will result now that 64-bit computing is available for embedded applications. In addition to the reference design program, we plan to leverage our efforts to offer standard products based on the 970FX chip in the coming months," observed Momentum's President Harry White. With power consumption as low as 12.3W at 1.4GHz, the 970FX processor (referred to as the 90-nm Power PC G5 by Apple Computer in their Xserve G5 systems) is the first to bring high performance computing to the embedded market. Based on IBM's award-winning POWER4(TM) architecture, the 970FX processor achieves high system performance with a dual-channel front-side processor bus of 1GHz and very fast hyper-transport interconnections. The device gives developers 64-bit computing power while assuring legacy support by running 32-bit applications natively. The new processor's dual independent buses, ability to address vast amounts of memory and superscalar execution core enable processing of hundreds of instructions in parallel. These characteristics will provide performance advantages for data intensive applications in High Performance Computing markets such as bioinformatics, high-precision simulation and any applications incorporating enhanced multimedia, graphics and data movement or requiring especially high bandwidth. Because Momentum has developed and built custom board-level computers for demanding markets including data/telecommunications, military and aerospace, they have a unique collection of building blocks that can be used to satisfy similar applications with decreased time to market. With the new 64-bit computing capabilities offered by the 970FX and associated components, Momentum's engineering team can analyze customers' specific applications and often suggest solutions that will meet their requirements with minimal development time and significantly lower cost than a fully custom development. Momentum's "building blocks" include platforms with a number of different configurations and processors in addition to the PowerPC(R) family, including: Pentium(R), MIPS, UltraSparc(R), CompactPCI(R), PICMG 2.16(R), VME(TM), PMCPr, ATX(TM) and Advanced TCA(TM).