Combining the programmable circuitry of a Xilinx field programmable gate array and the processing power of the Motorola ColdFire 5407 CPU, The ESP-1 Embedded System Platform provides a rapid development platform for custom device interfaces. The 74 fully-programmable I/O pins of the Xilinx FPGA allow for complex logic interfacing and buffering, while providing a bridge to the system microprocessor, which interprets and stores the data on a wide range of media by leveraging the device drivers available for the single board computer’s Linux based operating system. Data can be stored on disk, tape, or CD SCSI devices. Network access is available using the onboard 10/100Mb Ethernet adapter, while additional SCSI, IDE, or Fibre Channel devices can be attached to the single board computer’s PCI bus to access stored data.

The ESP-1 Embedded System Platform is shown with one SDRAM DIMM installed.