Although integrated circuit manufacturers are making major improvements in analog and digital performance, making these new chips available to users is expensive and time consuming. To increase availability, this project will develop an intelligent VME mother board that can accept four daughter boards. The daughter boards would contain the new chips, have access to the VME bus, and have access to each other for performing on-board logic. Phase I will evaluate the newest field-programmable gate arrays and lay out a VME board with complete VME access and an interface to intelligent, input/output gate arrays. The daughter boards would contain the new features and the ability to communicate with each other, thereby providing on-board system operations. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by awardee: An intelligent VME module, with daughter boards to provide the needed functions and system logic, should provide a faster and less expensive way to get the latest integrated circuit technology to users
