Although SpaceWire is fast approaching its 20th anniversary, the requirements for equipment to test and develop new SpaceWire devices and networks continues to evolve and push the capabilities of commercial technology.
STAR-Dundee has developed a new PCI Express product, the SpaceWire PCIe Mk2, to take advantage of the higher data rates offered in newer generations of the PCIe standard. The device features three SpaceWire ports capable of operating at 400 Mbit/s link speeds, and a PCIe Gen-3 interface that enables transmitting and receiving from/to software at the maximum rate on all links concurrently.
This high throughput is achieved through improvements to the STAR-System software suite which also includes other new features to support the latest requirements for SpaceWire test and development. As well as new graphical applications providing functionality such as the ability to operate as a Remote Memory Access Protocol (RMAP) initiator, support for ARM targets and the Python scripting language is also included.
This paper describes the advancements present in the SpaceWire PCIe Mk2 board and the STAR-System software suite, which simplify test and development activities while also providing higher throughput and lower latency transmission and reception of data.