Rugged VPX blade targets defence industry

The two CPU sub-systems are connected by PCIe x8 Gen2 non-transparent bridge. The VPX6000 is a SWaP-optimised platform designed to meet defence industry requirements for operation in harsh environments across wide operating temperature ranges (-40 to +75°C at wedge-lock) and withstanding high shock and vibration, while having a maximum power consumption of only 160W.

With this VPX blade, system integrators can map multiple functions such as control, graphics and signal processing onto one blade, or run dual independent systems. This reduces the card count and required number of spares and simplifies logistical support in the field. The VPX6000 also supports multiple operating systems, including Windows Embedded, Linux and VxWorks, providing flexibility for system design.

The VPX blade provides all-in-one manageability, including SmartFusion IPMC, built-in Self Test (BIT), and Intel AMT. With the high availability failover support provided by these features, system operation can be monitored and managed remotely and problems prevented or immediately corrected to avoid critical system crashes.

The VPX6000 provides flexibility and reliability with fast I/O including VGA, GbE and two USB 3.0 on the front panel, and HDMI/DVI, three USB 3.0, two serial ports, PS/2 keyboard/mouse, eight GPIO and audio to the backplane. In addition, an expansion plane of two PCIe x8 Gen2 with DMA is provided. The VPX blade also supports 16GB soldered dual-channel DDR3L ECC memory and upgradeable storage via SSD mezzanine card for flexible storage compared to traditional hard disk drives.