Aitech's Rugged 3U VPX Products with Reduced SWaP Ideal for Compact Computing Systems

Based on the latest in OpenVPX serial fabric architecture technology, Aitech's newest 3U product family is ideal for computing environments that require extreme data throughput as found in network-centric communications, high-definition avionics displays, mission and controls systems computers, data concentrators and condition-based maintenance (CBM) applications.

The new 3U VPX family includes the C870 SBC with a Core i7 dual-core processor configured to run at either 2.53 GHz for high performance, 2 GHz for low-power or at 1.33 GHz where ultra low power is required, and incorporates an on-board Intel Gen 5.75 high-performance graphics controller with 12 execution units capable of 2D/3D graphics processing, shading and rendering. The each processor core features an on-chip 32 kB data and 32 kB instruction L1 cache and 256 kB L2 cache, with a shared 4 MB of L3 cache.

The C870 offers substantial arrays of all-soldered volatile and non-volatile memory (no connectors) to meet the highest shock and vibration conditions. As standard, the board provides up to 4 GB of DDR3 SDRAM with ECC operating at 1066 MHz, 4 MB of BIOS Flash and 8 GB of on-board SATA SSD for mass storage. Standard onboard I/O is also plentiful with four GbE ports (two 1000Base T, two 1000Base BX/KX), two SATA II ports, four USB 2.0 ports and eight discrete I/O lines as well as two UART ports and HDMI/DVI and CRT interfaces for graphics requirements.

With its custom BIOS that includes POST/BIT capabilities as well as system configuration options for boot device and boot sequence, the SBC fully supports Windows Embedded and XP Professional as well as Linux and VxWorks operating environments. For mission critical applications, two temperature sensors, a real-time clock, an avionics watchdog timer and a trusted program module (TPM) are also included on the C870.

As part of the 3U VPX family of products, the OpenVPX-compliant CM870 is a low-power, rugged PMC/XMC carrier board designed to plug into an adjacent 3U backplane slot in order to expand system functionality by enabling the addition of I/O, graphics and SSD memory PMC/XMC cards. This configuration provides an extremely fast, compact computer system optimized for SWaP (size, weight and power).

The CM870 supports four PCIe x4 ports, per VITA 46.3 and 46.4, via its VPX backplane fabric interface. The card's PMC site accommodates 64-bit 66/133 MHz PCI-X and 33/66 MHz PCI, while the XMC site supports PCIe x8. The factory-configurable I/O routing can provide all 64 I/O lines for the PMC configuration and 32 single-ended and 20 differential I/O lines for the XMC configuration, per VITA 46.9.

Both the SBC and carrier card are single-slot modules and are available in air- and conduction-cooled formats, per ANSI/VITA 46.0-2007 and ANSI/VITA 65.0-2010 respectively. The carrier card weighs less than 0.7 lbs in both formats, while the air-cooled SBC weighs 0.66 lbs and the conduction-cooled version weighs 0.7 lbs.