Staying cool is not easy in many of today’s densely packaged embedded computing systems. To really get the heat out can sometimes call for some liquid refreshment. Elma Electronic Inc. has a new rugged 1 ATR tall, short enclosure with independent dual liquid-cooled side walls that offers significantly better cooling than conduction-only and airflow designs. Ideal for highly dense embedded systems with exceptional heat dissipation requirements, the new platform holds 6U VPX conduction-cooled boards.

The chassis is available with a 6U OpenVPX backplane on a 1" pitch with seven slots, each cooled up to 100 W: one slot for storage, one for switch, and five payload slots.

The all-aluminum chassis has electron beam welded fluid channels in the side walls that can use a variety of cooling fluids, including dielectric fluids (PAO), inhibited glycol/water solutions (PGW, EGW), kerosene, deionized water, and salt water.

VME and VXS get into gear with the high-speed A/D Pallene-V6, from TEK Microsystems. The Pallene-V6 combines three Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGAs with Texas Instruments ADS54RF63 12-bit A/D converters, supporting eight channels at up to 550 MSps with sample accurate synchronization across multiple boards.

With three highly connected FPGA sites, the two front-end FPGAs are attached directly to the A/D converters, providing a simple and direct high-speed connection from the ADCs to the FPGA. The third FPGA can be used to support additional processing and provides any required protocol support for either front-panel or backplane interfaces.

The Pallene-V6 supports 12 full-duplex, high-speed fiber optic connections through the front panel, along with 8 to 12 full-duplex, high-speed fabric connections through the VXS P0 connector. When all links are utilized, the Pallene-V6 supports total aggregate bandwidth of 37 GBps (18.5 GBps in each direction) to other off-board processing resources.

Analog signals can never be digitized too fast, it seems, based on the wave of A/D modules hitting the market these days. Accordingly, Pentek announced its fastest-ever data acquisition module for the popular Cobalt family. The Model 71640, in FMC form factor, provides a substantial jump in speed over existing 1 GHz A/D modules and will take customers into new wideband radar and communication applications where 1,500 MHz bandwidth signals can now be digitized by a single A/D. This makes the 71640 ideal for UAV applications where weight and space are tightly constrained. Leveraging the National Semiconductor ADC12D1800 12-bit A/D converter, the 71640 provides two transformer-coupled RF input ports that can operate in single- or dual-channel mode. For even wider bandwidths or for multichannel systems, the 71640 offers a unique synchronization bus that works with a companion timing module for sample-accurate synchronization of multiple Cobalt modules.

FPGAs are everywhere these days, doing nothing but getting faster and enabling new levels of signal processing and I/O flexibility. Designed for Digital Signal Processing (DSP), the versatile TIC-FEP-VPX3b front-end processing board from Elma Electronic is ideal for applications such as radar, sonar, electronic warfare, imaging, and communications. The 3U VPX TIC-FEP-VPX3b provides an FMC site coupled to a large-capacity Virtex-6 FPGA for extremely flexible I/O.

Built to the VPX specifications, the TIC-FEP-VPX3b includes four 4-lane fabric ports on the P1, connected by GTX transceivers to the main FPGA. The four fat pipe channels provide PCIe x4 and GbE interfaces as well as two x4 expansion ports.

The GTX transceivers can be grouped to form multi-lane Aurora pipes supporting inter-VPX card connection, allowing the FPGA processor boards to be very tightly coupled via point-to-point or mesh topology. The board fits scalable architectures, where more than one FPGA processor is required.

VME64 single board computers are still showing up as new products, and they are more connected than ever. The IOxOS Technologies IPV_1102, based on Freescale’s PowerPC P2020 computing core and Xilinx Virtex-5T FPGA, is a great example. The IPV_1102 can extend its capabilities beyond the boundaries of the VME chassis through a PCI Express x4 external cable connection implemented in its front panel. The innovation is that the physical connection is implemented as a plug-in expansion I/O module to support both copper and optical physical media, allowing link lengths up to 100 meters.

To deal with VMEbus, the VME64x interface is implemented within the Virtex-5T FPGA and optimized to deliver unprecedented low-latency VME64x transfers for time-critical applications. The P2020 processor is tightly coupled with the on-board Xilinx Virtex-5T FPGA, which implements the IOxOS Technologies proprietary PCI Express-centric Network on Chip (NoC).

Paper or plastic? Fries or chips? The options are sometimes overwhelming, as they might also seem to be with this single-slot SBC from North Atlantic Industries that offers plug-in modules for the processor subsystem as well as various I/O options. But when all stacked up with four modules, this PowerPC or Blackfin 64EP3 SBC replaces multiple boards with just one. I/O options include typical defense and automotive analog and digital sensor types, as well as communications schemes like MIL-STD-1553 and GbE. Interestingly, the board comes with a dedicated FPGA and function libraries designed to do pre- and post-data processing, depending upon the I/O subsystem.

The CPU can be either an ADI Blackfin 500 MHz BF-533 DSP processor with Visual DSP++ 4.5 libraries and emulator, or a Freescale MPC8536 PowerQUICC III running at 1.25 GHz. Each CPU subsystem is equipped with flash, an FPGA, and direct I/O to front panel or rear panel I/O when ordered as a conduction-cooled LRU. The PowerPC has DDR2, while the DSP has SRAM. These CPU modules then order around the many I/O choices, which include ARINC 429/575, RS-232/422/485, or CANbus. There’s also myriad other less sexy, though no less important, I/O: A/D, D/A, discrete/TTL/CMOS/differential; RTD, synchro/resolver, LVDT/RVDT, or an encoder. With four mix-and-match slots, the 64EP3 offers lots o’ I/O in not a lot of space.

As Intel’s Core family of CPUs takes the civilian world by storm, the military is closer behind than ever before. Gone are the days of waiting two or more years for the rugged, embedded version. Take Aitech’s C870 (SBC) and CM870 (PMC/XMC carrier) boards, for instance. These single-slot, 3U VPX boards pack more into two 3U boards than was previously available from two 6U boards. The SBC is equipped with Intel’s Nehalem-based Core i7 dual-core CPU running at 2.53 GHz for performance, all the way down to 1.33 GHz for “ultra-low power.” Since Aitech knows rugged (sounds like a slogan, doesn’t it?), the 4 GB of DDR3 SDRAM with ECC is soldered to the board. There’s also 4 MB of flash BIOS and 8 GB of SSD storage.

I/O on the C870 CPU includes 2 1000BASE-T Ethernet and 2 1000-BASE-BX/KX (backplane Ethernet), 2 SATA II ports, 4 USB 2.0, and 8 discrete I/O. There’s also an Intel graphics controller onboard, so HDMI/DVI and CRI outputs are also present. Operating systems include Windows XP and Embedded, plus Linux and VxWorks. The CM870 carrier card is designed for PMC and XMC boards and supports PCIe x4, 64-bit 66/133 PCI-X, and plain old PCI. For XMC boards, there’s PCIe x8. All of this routing is compliant with VITA 46.3, 46.4, and 46.9 for various VPX configurations. And as we said earlier, since Aitech knows rugged, both boards are available in air- and conduction-cooled flavors. Amazingly, both cards weigh less than 0.7 pounds each in conduction-cooled armor.

Ah, choices. It’s good to have them. Paper or plastic? Fries? Serial RapidIO or PCIe? These are the choices available to designers of extremely rugged systems when specifying the single-slot C110 from Aitech. The 6U SBC is based upon VPX (VITA 46) with OpenVPX (VITA 65) profiles and features a dual-core PowerPC MPC8640D – one of the last from Freescale available with AltiVec. The CPU clocks at 1.25 GHz and has 2 GB of dual-channel DDR2 SDRAM with ECC, 128 MB of flash, and 8 GB of NAND flash for nonvolatile mass storage.

Since this board is all about the VPX fabric, there are four x4 ports that are configurable for either Serial RapidIO or PCIe. Depending upon the OpenVPX profile, the board can “talk” in VME64, 2eSST, or 2eVME, besides the fabric choices. I/O includes four GbE ports, four USB2, two SATA2, 6 asynchronous serial ports, and 8 GPIO. There’s also I2C to provide system-level board management plus rail voltages, temperatures, and other metrics. Finally, add-on flexibility is provided by two PMC/XMC slots and an optional Aitech I/O module. As with all Aitech boards, this one’s available for extreme environments, operating from -55 °C to +85 °C.

Routing all I/O off the backplane of a conduction-cooled board is well and good at the deployment stage, but it can be a nightmare during development. PCI-SYSTEMS, the company always innovating something new for VME and its ecosystem, has come up with a set of PCIe cables for OpenVPX. But not just any OpenVPX board: for a conduction-cooled OpenVPX board. Designed to simplify high-speed connectivity to conduction-cooled systems, the cable and companion boards bridge an OpenVPX system to a standard convection-cooled PCIe system.

Available in x4 and x8 PCIe flavors, a PCIe air-cooled expansion board can be cabled to a downstream VPX/OpenVPX system. The cable mates to a companion 3U, conduction-cooled OpenVPX board plugged into a VPX CPU slot. The board is VITA 46 (VPX) compliant and supports Power On/Cable Present modes. There are two PCIe x4 connectors on the 3U board’s front panel.

From the original Motorola QUICC to the modern Freescale PowerPC-based PowerQUICC, designers could be assured of one thing: maximum peripheral density in a low-power package. That’s the reason Interface Concept, a European provider of all kinds of open-standard small form factor hardware, opted to use the 1 GHz PowerQUICC III MPC8536E. It’s at the heart of a new 3U VPX convection-cooled carrier/XMC sandwich boasting impressive I/O in a small footprint.

The main event is the 1 GHz PowerQUICC III backed up by 1 GB of DDR2 SDRAM with ECC. There’s also 128 MB of flash and 4 GB of NAND flash for larger NV storage. There are up to 3 GbE ports, 1x USB 2.0 port, 2 SATA ports (on P2), and 2x RS-232 serial ports. Best of all, with a board blasting data from all its ports, it consumes a mere 10 W at 1 GHz. The convection-cooled board is available in standard, extended, and rugged grades. BSPs include VxWorks and Linux, with custom BSPs available.

Sure, everyone’s got a VPX SBC – but where do you go when you want high-density, single-slot synchro/resolver I/O? Why, North Atlantic Industries, of course. You’ll want to get your mitts on the 67C3, a modular 6U VPX motherboard that can be populated by up to 6 independent submodules to realize myriad I/O functions. And, each I/O can be controlled by VME, dual GbE, Serial RapidIO, or PCIe. Control and packing density are the keywords of this OpenVPX board.

The choices for connectivity are impressive: synchro/resolver, LVDT/RVDT simulation and measurement, A/D, D/A, discrete/differential/TTL/CMOS, RTD, encoder, and a plethora of more common I/O. These include: serial (RS-232/422/485), MIL-STD-1553, ARINC 429, and even the automotive CANbus. The board is available in air- and conduction-cooled versions, and it can operate over -40 °C to +85 °C. It’s kind of like shopping at the dollar store, with so many choices available it’s hard to decide which combination to choose.

Dubbing their SBC312 3U VPX SBC the sixth member of the GE Intelligent Platforms VPX lineup, this version has on-paper specs of 4x the performance of earlier versions (as measured by the number of cores). Based upon the Freescale QorIQ 8-core P4080, this SBC delivers oh-so-much-more performance and I/O bandwidth, while keeping a lid on power consumption and heat dissipation. The SBC is designed for small shoebox systems such as UAS platforms or any box demanding gobs of horsepower in a small space.

The P4080 (or optional four-core P4040) is attached to 4 GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory. Two x4 PCIe (Gen 2) links can be broken down into four x1 links, one of which can be converted into a 10 GbE port. Also included: an additional 2 1000BASE-T ports, 2 serial, 2 USB2, 2 SATA, and 8 GPIO – just for good measure. The VITA 46 board is also available in other mechanical versions, including a VITA 48 format for two-level maintenance, and there are five air- and conduction-cooled versions. There’s even a PMC/XMC mezzanine site, in case you need even more I/O or processing oomph. A comprehensive set of BSPs and operating systems is available.

Ok, so “cryo cooler” is a bit of a stretch, but these enhanced Cascade Series Thermoelectric Assemblies (TEAs) from Laird Technologies are way cool. Literally. Boasting nearly double the cooling capacity versus single-stage Thermoelectric Modules (TEMs), these TEAs may eliminate the need for more exotic and potentially unreliable cooling solutions such as compressors. Designed for medical applications to keep samples cool and for analytical instruments requiring cooling below 0 °C, the devices are small and can be mounted directly to hot electronics such as CCDs in high-precision imaging systems.

Multistage TEMs achieve a very high temperature differential from ambient, providing up to 40 percent higher cooling capacity at cold temperatures. They’re solid state and their size may allow them to be integrated into a final assembly in either of two common configurations: Air-Air (AA) or Direct Air (DA). AA uses convection cooling where heat is absorbed and dissipated by high-density heat exchangers and ducted outward via shrouds and fans. In DA, conduction cooling is used through a cold plate and then air is moved across the cold plate similar to AA. At temperatures greater than +30 °C from ambient, Laird claims their products achieve almost 60 percent of maximum cooling, versus only 30 percent of other products. The company doesn’t offer much detail about their secret sauce, so we have to take their word for it.

British carmaker John Cooper and TiaLinx, Inc. might have shared a common bond: the ability to go “Mini.” Indeed, TiaLinx’s 2W V-band transmitter and receiver modules just might set their own mini trend as they facilitate customized Giga-band wireless link integration and shrink TiaLinx’s Eagle60 family of Ultra-Wideband (UWB) RF imaging wares down to size (literally). Developed and supported courtesy of an SBIR Phase II contract with the Office of Naval Research and the Army’s PM CCS, the TLXAR60 receiver module proffers downconversion, while the TLXAT60 transmitter does the upconversion.

The transmitter module, in the active array flavor, comprises several 57-64 GHz power amplifiers. Meanwhile, the receiver’s active-array amplifiers are low-noise, accepting signals and blending them for base-band system delivery. The modules offer a combining gain in excess of 12 dB, and the individual modules use less than 2.5 W. Module interfaces are suited for communications to/from off-the-shelf, hand-portable radar and other systems.

MIL-STD-1553 and ARINC 429 are the de facto communications buses in avionics and other military applications, and Data Device Corporation (DDC) is regarded as a COTS market leader, providing the lion’s share of ICs supporting each bus. But avionics systems are not controlled by silicon alone: There’s sophisticated software required during the simulation, design, test, verification, and integration phases of every program. So with DDC’s updated software-licensing options ready to roll, designers have more flexibility in how they want to pay for that software. It’s not sexy or technical, but it’s an essential reality in cost-constrained DoD programs.

DDC’s host-based software packages can now be covered under three types of licenses: USB dongle, node-locked, and network. The dongle is for one-off systems, often laptops that move from place to place. The node-locked license is intended for dedicated, secure computers that absolutely must remain in a fixed location, without the hassle of an external license or key. And finally, the network license is useful for distributed teams that do simultaneous development work in multiple locations. All three new license types apply to the company’s dataSIMS, BusTrACEr, ARINC Data Bus Analyzer, and LabVIEW Support Package software products. We’ll say it again: not sexy, but certainly a very welcomed change that’ll save implementation costs in mil programs.

It’s always a trade-off: a small board to fit into a small space but a reduced capability or horsepower because of limited real estate. The XMC mezzanine was designed to add high-speed PCI Express fabric I/O onto baseboards such as 6U VME or 3U VPX, as well as carrier boards. The Interface Concept IC-PQ3-XMCa balances size, performance, and power in an industry-standard form factor. Boasting a 1 GHz Freescale PowerQUICC III MPC8536E, the XMC targets high-rel markets including defense, telecom, and industrial.

The processor itself is a veritable System-on-Chip, chock-full of 2x GbE, 2x SATA, 3x USB, eSPI, DUART, and GPIO. There’s also an 8-lane SERDES with both PCIe and PCI plus DMAC. Onboard memory to the XMC includes 1 GB of DDR2 with ECC, 128 MB of flash, and 4 GB of NAND flash. Interface Concept has also added a third GbE port and made the board available in standard, extended, and rugged grades. Typical full-power operation (1 GHz) is a mere 10 W, substantiating the company’s claim of “ultra low power.”

Since the days of VME on P1 and P2, Mercury Computer Systems has sought faster ways of moving data around VME systems. And as the creator of the RACE interboard I/O scheme, it’s not surprising that Mercury also initiated OpenVPX. Relying on a multiplane, interoperable approach, Mercury’s Ensemble 6000 Series of SBCs and sensor processors is targeted at Electronic Warfare (EW) and ISR applications. The SBC6521 of the series uses a 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 800 MHz FSB and acts as subsystem host for an OpenVPX architecture. High-density processing with high memory bandwidth are the SBC’s hallmarks.

Memory is 2 GB with ECC, plus 4 GB of NAND flash. There are two GbE ports: one routed to P4 and the control plane and a 10/100/1000 Ethernet port routed to the front panel or backplane. There are 2 PMC-X/XMC sites with PCI-X up to 133 MHz, 1x RS-232/422, 3 USB, 2x SATA, and 8x GPIO to the backplane. Since this is OpenVPX, IPMI-A and -B links are on the P0 management plane, Ethernet on the control plane, 4x PCIe to P1 on the data plane, and dual x8 PCIe to the P2 expansion plane. Operating temp is -40 °C to +85 °C in air-cooled versions, and -40 °C to +71 °C in conduction-cooled versions. The SBC6521 complements Mercury’s GSC6200 GPGPU-based number-cruncher in Processing, Exploitation, and Dissemination (PED) applications.

From barely having dual-core CPUs two years ago, Freescale is now shipping eight-core QorIQ (pronounced “core IQ”) CPUs such as the P4080. Extreme Engineering takes advantage of those 1.5 GHz e500 cores in its XPedite5470 3U OpenVPX SBC. Designed for air- and conduction-cooled chassis, the board runs 0 to +55 °C or -40 to +85 °C and boasts BSPs for Linux, VxWorks, QNX Neutrino, and INTEGRITY. The same basic design is also available in 3U CompactPCI, PMC/XMC, VME, and 6U VPX and CompactPCI flavors.

The CPU is kept fed via 8 GB of DDR3-133 ECC SDRAM in two channels (4 GB each), along with 256 MB of NOR and 16 GB of NAND flash. Boot loader code stored in NVRAM can be hardware write protected to assure no nefarious (or accidental) overwrites occur. I/O is straightforward: Serial RapidIO, x4 PCIe, SERDES GbE, 2 optional 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports, and the always-popular RS-232/422/485 ports (2). Additional I/O can be added via PrPMC or XMC. There’s also I2C and a real-time clock.

Remember all the fuss about RapidIO during the “fabric wars” five years ago? Yours truly predicted RapidIO would emerge a winner. It has (though not as I predicted), and it forms the internal backbone of ultra-high performance mission computers. Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing is capitalizing on RapidIO’s direct memory-mapped robustness in the VPX6-6902. This single-slot 6U board supports many OpenVPX profiles and configurations, but bridges RapidIO to multiple Ethernet ports. This offers the best of both worlds: inter- and intra-box switching using the best fabric for the job, be it GbE or Gen 2 RapidIO.

Supporting Gen-1 Serial RapidIO (1.25, 2.5, and 3.125 Gbaud) and Gen-2 (5.0 and 6.25 Gbaud), the switch has 28 four-lane ports. A typical configuration is 24x Serial RapidIO (x4) to the VPX backplane and 4x Serial RapidIO (x4) to the front with no Ethernet switching. But there are also 16x SERDES GbE and 2x 1000BASE-T ports to the backplane, along with 2x 10GbE and 1x 1000BASE-T to the front. Another board configuration might be 20x Serial RapidIO (x4) to the backplane, 4x Serial RapidIO (x4) to the front, along with 16x SERDES GbE and 2x 1000BASE-T to the rear with an additional 2x 10 GbE and one 1000BASE-T to the front. That’s a lot of I/O routing, all thanks to OpenVPX. As always, the board is available in air- and conduction-cooled rugged versions (though some I/O may be limited in conduction-cooled variants).

Without a sensor, how would you really know if there’s a tempest in your teapot? Similarly, do you know the airflow in your VME chassis or temperature in your ATR box? Advanced Thermal Solutions (ATS) hopes to solve this dilemma for test engineers via ATS’s turnkey iTHERM-100 Test Station. The station consists of laboratory instruments and sensors designed to study precise airflow, velocity, and temperature on boards and heat sinks and in racks and chassis.

Included are a benchtop, laboratory-grade wind tunnel, an automated controller, and multiple sensors (see center of photo) that aid in precisely managing velocity airflow direction within the test environment. As configured, airflow can be characterized and pressure drop measured over components and heat sinks. Adding a thermocouple allows temperature measurements on individual devices. Individual portions of the test station can be reconfigured for individual use, separately from the manufacturer’s system setup.

Citing data-driven architectures as the secret sauce behind the “complete” battlefield, GE Intelligent Platforms brings to the party their SBC622 in 6U VPX battle dress. Using a 2.53 GHz Intel Core i7, the board is targeted toward radar, sonar, and video for early warning or command and control systems, and the aggregation, analysis, and dissemination of real-time sensor data. We think maybe that covers it all … maybe even servo control systems, but we digress. With an optional 8 GB of ECC DDR3 SDRAM, the CPU is 30 percent faster than its predecessor. As well, hyperthreading and Intel’s Turbo Boost get more work per clock out of this multicore processor.

There are 2 PCI-X PMC/XMC sites for user-added I/O and 6 USB ports routed as: 2x front panel (on air-cooled versions), 4x to P6, and 2x to P4. (That adds up to 8, so there must be some redundancy.) As for the fabric interface – the heart of VITA 46 (VPX) and VITA 65 (OpenVPX) – there’s dual 10 GbE routed to P1. There’s also 4x GbE to P4 or 3x to P4 plus 1x to the front panel (if equipped). Other I/O includes: display, 3x SATA, 2x COM, and 3x GPIO. Conduction-cooled versions are available.

Like death and taxes, EMI is inevitable – at least in modern high-frequency board designs. And VME is especially prone to EMI because of multi-gigabit signals and processors that clock higher than 1 GHz. So shielding certain components is prudent … not sexy, but smart. The 80 Series CBS from Leader Tech is a basic EMI shield that does what it’s supposed to do: shield large-profile components up to 60 dB.

What sets the 80 Series apart is the customization its vendor is willing to undertake. The shield can be manufactured to accommodate heights from 0.80" to a whopping 4.0": The latter wouldn’t fit on any VME board we know of, but not every VME system component is located on a VME board (think of chassis panels, PSUs, and so on). The shield is a two-piece patented design and is available in 14 different styles, including through-hole and SMT. Since customization is the 80 Series’ main differentiator, many parameters can be manipulated to suit the final system design: cover retention dimples, pin spacing, base material, and ventilation holes, among other parameters.

The iPhone has shown the world what a good Graphical User Interface (GUI) looks like. And with the proliferation of embedded graphics hardware – from SoCs and CPU chipsets to GPUs and even soft implementations – military designers are adding graphics to all manner of deployed systems. But how to create DO-178B safety-certifiable graphics code for all these devices? That’s the niche into which ALT Software has positioned its Hybrid ML for OpenGL libraries. The software library and device driver architecture is designed to leverage “all manner of media-accelerated devices.”

Designed to work with most low-power graphics cores – such as the Intel US15W, Freescale 5121, TI OMAP, or Fujitsu Ruby – Hybrid ML provides a standardized front-end API and DO-178B-certifiable soft implementations of GPU stages. Designers then add hardware accelerators based on programmable pipeline stages. GPU virtualization, partitioned RTOS operation, multicontext support, and multiple GPU with a single API are also part of the libraries. Included features are: small-footprint OpenGL SC and OpenGL ES API; trusted implementations of geometry caching, state tracking, memory management, and others; reliable shader implementations; and control of a set of virtual contexts for homo- or heterogeneous GPUs.

You may not find too many Wi-Fi antennae on VME or VPX boards, but they might be installed in the end system. And with 3U VPX’s promise for smaller chassis sizes, a 2" Wi-Fi antenna might tuck right into place unnoticed. The Wi-Fi Pro Dual Band antenna from Spectrum Advanced Specialty Products operates on ISM 2.4 and 5.8 GHz bands and is specifically designed for military Wi-Fi LANs, mission-critical machine-to-machine communications, and embedded commercial Wi-Fi.

The omnidirectional antenna makes mounting as simple as finding space in the system. Hookup is via coax, connector, or direct mount. The IEEE 802.11n-(x) antenna withstands -55 °C to +85 °C and joins the company’s growing list of specialty and custom antenna products.

Speed is one thing, but boasting best-in-class speed, price, and system size is something we notice. National Semiconductor (NSC) is blazing their own trail with what they call “the industry’s fastest 12-bit ADC” in the ADC12D1x00 Family, which targets high-speed RF designs like SDR, radar, LIDAR and Set-Top Boxes (STBs). Sure, there are faster 16-bit devices, but be prepared to pay. NSC has taken existing, proven semiconductor process technology and coupled it to equally proven IC logic combined in a new way. The result? A two-channel 12-bit analog-to-digital converter that screams at 3.6 GSps, a claimed 3.6x faster than the competition. As well, the 1.9 V single-supply device has two channels that can operate interleaved (at 3.6 GSps) or independently, and can be synchronized for multichip operation.

There are actually three devices available: ADC12D1800 (3.6 GSps), ADC12D1600 (3.2 GSps), and ADC12D1000 (2.0 GSps). All have per-channel programmable gain and offset adjustment, extended self-calibration, and a flat response of all dynamics for inputs greater than 2 GHz. Power consumption ranges from 2.08 W per channel for the ‘1800, down to 1.7 W per channel for the ‘1000 – all extremely low for the speeds offered. As well, the small 292-ball BGA allows replacing loads of front-end active and passive components in radar, STB, and other RF designs. This also saves space, power, and cost. NSC points out that in this “new class” of device, new design metrics beyond Nyquist are needed: noise-floor, Noise Power Ratio (NPR), and IMD. Detailed specifications and definitions are available from National Semiconductor. Also, a 376-column CCGA space-qualified device is available, meeting 120 MeV SEL.

From barely having dual-core CPUs two years ago, Freescale is now shipping eight-core QorIQ (pronounced “core IQ”) CPUs such as the P4080. Extreme Engineering takes advantage of those 1.5 GHz e500 cores in its XPedite5470 3U OpenVPX SBC. Designed for air- and conduction-cooled chassis, the board runs 0 to +55 °C or -40 to +85 °C and boasts BSPs for Linux, VxWorks, QNX Neutrino, and INTEGRITY. The same basic design is also available in 3U CompactPCI, PMC/XMC, VME, and 6U VPX and CompactPCI flavors.

The CPU is kept fed via 8 GB of DDR3-133 ECC SDRAM in two channels (4 GB each), along with 256 MB of NOR and 16 GB of NAND flash. Boot loader code stored in NVRAM can be hardware write protected to assure no nefarious (or accidental) overwrites occur. I/O is straightforward: Serial RapidIO, x4 PCIe, SERDES GbE, 2 optional 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports, and the always-popular RS-232/422/485 ports (2). Additional I/O can be added via PrPMC or XMC. There’s also I2C and a real-time clock.

While some industry pundits still predict the eventual demise of VME, wares like Extreme Engineering Solutions’ XCalibur1531 6U VME single board computer just go to show that old faithful is still alive and kicking. And even thriving: This SBC is souped up for today’s high-performance mil apps, kicked into high gear with a Freescale MPC8572E PowerQUICC III processor fully loaded with two e500 Power Architecture cores speeding along at rates up to 1.5 GHz. Also contributing to XCalibur1531’s high throttle is its memory: Up to 256 MB NOR flash (with redundancy) and 16 GB NAND, in addition to up to 4 GB (two channels) of DDR2-800 SDRAM including ECC.

Meanwhile, I/O detailing includes two XMC/PrPMC interfaces, three USB 2.0 ports, and a SATA 3.0 Gbps port. The SBC also lends support for XMC I/O, PMC I/O, four GbE ports, plus P2/P0 backplane connectors and/or RS-232/422/485 serial ports on the front panel. And the behind-the-scenes driver, of course, is the Board Support Package (BSP). This one’s got four BSP courses to race on: Wind River VxWorks, Green Hills INTEGRITY, Linux, or QNX Neutrino. And XCalibur1531 bodes well against strong headwinds – or other aspects of harsh environments – with 5 ruggedization levels, including rugged air-cooled and conduction-cooled, the latter of which operates at -40 °C to +85 °C.

On one hand, there are the classic technologies like VME that have been around for years. On the other, there are new processors and technologies such as Intel’s Core i7. Though the latest technologies quickly gain more notoriety than the tried-and-true technologies, it doesn’t have to be an “either/or” proposition. Concurrent Technologies apparently found the philosophy appealing, as manifested in its VP 717/08x family of 6U VME boards, which feature ... a Core i7 processor. Since VME is known to be hale and hearty, the VP 717/08x has followed suit, with extended-temp versions available now and ruggedized air- or conduction-cooled versions to soon follow.

Designed to handle CPU-intensive processing applications for the homeland security, defense, transportation, and industrial control industries, VP 717/08x is based on an Intel Platform Controller Hub (PCH) in addition to the Mobile Intel QM57 Express chipset. Supporting the classic VITA 31.1 GbE on a VME64x backplane standard, other highlights offered by the VP 717/08x include two XMC x8 PCI Express or 100 MHz PCI-X PMC sites, optional expansion for two additional PMC sites, 2048 x 1536 analog graphics, 2x RS-232/422/485, SATA300 and EIDE rear I/O interfaces plus an optional SATA300 2.5-inch disk drive … not to mention 2x GbE ports and 64 MB application flash memory.

VPX has inspired the VME industry with its small form factor and extreme ruggedness, even serving as the catalyst for the OpenVPX (VITA 65) movement. But one thing that has been less than inspiring with VPX – or at least proven itself quite a challenge – is that of testing VPX designs. However, Elma Bustronic Corporation’s 2-slot Test Backplane aims to thwart these VPX testing snafus. And, of course, the method depends on the challenge at hand.

One VPX testing challenge occurs because VPX cards are typically developed with an RTM that cannot access J1 fabric signals, meaning that engineers can’t test J1 fabric signals at the same time the RTM module is accessing I/O signals. However, the 2-slot Test Backplane enables access to and connection with primary J1 signals without having to sacrifice simultaneous RTM use. Secondly, it has typically been necessary to design custom backplanes to connect fabric signals amongst multiple VPX blades heretofore; however, the 2-slot Test Backplane enables users to connect at least two blades prior to investing in a custom backplane. Larger chassis designs can also benefit, as it is feasible to connect all the J1 primary fabric into any desired serial topology. And a bonus capability: It can be used to test both 3U and 6U VPX designs.

Avionics technology’s depth and breadth has risen to an all-time high, leaving Orville and Wilbur Wright’s comparatively basic flying machine technology in the proverbial dust. Though the brothers’ 1903 flight made history and serves as the basis of modern flight, that historic day would have undeniably occurred sooner had the Wright brothers had access to myriad embedded wares used today by Boeing, NASA, and others. One such technology is the XMC form factor, which was recently incarnated once again by GE Intelligent Platforms in the form of its RXMC-1553 high-density, rugged MIL-STD-1553 XMC module.

Ideal for avionics testing and simulation applications, the module provides 100 percent monitoring for fully loaded buses. Additionally, the conduction-cooled RXMC-1553 has either one or two channels. Each channel features 1 MB memory and is designed to flexibly accommodate MIL-STD-1553 A/B Notice II applications. RXMC-1553 also features multifunction interfaces that can work via a simultaneous bus controller, along with bus monitor functionality and up to 31 remote terminals. On the other hand, single-function interfaces do everything that the multifunction interfaces do; however, each major operational mode must operate one at a time. The RoHS compliant module also renders 45-bit microsecond message time tagging, error injection/detection, automatic/manual RT status bit and mode code responses, and an IRIG-B signal receiver/generator with GPS synchronization.