Advise on New Project (aka Help rescue me from VxWorks!)

[Robert S. Grimes]

Excuse me if these are not appropriate for this mailing list, but I have 
a request for advice, and a suggestion for the web site...

1. Requested Advice:

I am about to start a new project with one of my major clients, who 
generally uses VxWorks.  While the last project I did for them used 
RTEMS, the new project nominally has VxWorks penciled in (prior to my 
arrival on the team).

The reason I went with RTEMS for the previous project was a custom board 
for a Virtex4-based PowerPC, so a custom BSP was needed for whatever 
RTOS was chosen; hence, I was able to justify going with RTEMS.  Also, 
the schedule was not very tight for software.  However, on the new 
project, the schedule is tight, and the decision has already been made 
to purchase off-the-shelf processor, FPGA, IRIG, networking, and storage 
components, and certainly use an off-the-shelf RTOS/BSP combination.  A 
very rough set of components have been suggested as a strawman approach.

My desire is to use RTEMS on this, and hence, would need to identify a 
processor that meets the following criteria:

   1. Modern, high-performance architecture (plenty of RAM, Flash, etc.)
   2. Support for IRIG, networking, mass storage
   3. Support for Xilinx FPGA
   4. Available bootloader and RTEMS BSP

The strawman architecture is CompactPCI, but that is not necessarily 
required.  The first three criteria could be met either by a single 
board system, or be bus-based; I'm guessing the latter is preferable to 
them.

I did a search a year or two ago for another project, and didn't find 
many current processor boards that included.  So, my obvious question is 
this: anybody have any recommendations here?  Bonus points for 
candidates you've used yourself, of course!

2. Suggestion

I also have a suggestion, which is the real reason I decided to risk 
this post (after all, I can and will research the above question 
myself!).  There is really no information on the web site that readily 
supports users who are tasked with projects that need an off-the-shelf 
solution.  It seems a "no-brainer" that such information would help to 
increase RTEMS acceptance as an alternative to other options.  Yes, 
there is the Available BSP section of the Wiki, but many are obsolete, 
and it's difficult to determine that, and basic specs for the target boards.

I don't know what the form of this information would be, but perhaps 
something as simple as a page titled "Commercially Available Processors 
with RTEMS BSP and Bootloader", which could be as simple as a list of 
such, with convenient links to the (possibly existing) RTEMS BSP and 
vendor product pages.

Regards,
-Bob

I don't know