Concurrent Technologies Announce 3U VPX Processor Board

3U VPX is particularly well suited to high-end compute intensive applications in military embedded, aerospace and transportation systems for data acquisition, control systems and video signal processing.



The 4th generation Intel Core processor family is based on 22nm process technology. This quad-core processor provides enhanced CPU and graphics performance over previous generations at TDP levels up to 47W. Additionally, new instructions are introduced, including: the Intel®Advanced Vector Extensions 2.0 to provide a performance improvement in integer and floating-point-intensive computations particularly appropriate for image processing applications, and the Intel AES New Instructions enhancements to accelerate data encryption and decryption in hardware.



The TR B12/msd is a 3U VPX processor board featuring this latest quad-core processor and supporting chipset, with up to 16Gbytes DDR3L DRAM with ECC. Additional features include 4 x SATA600 mass storage interfaces, on-board SATA Flash, serial and USB interfaces, graphics and stereo audio interfaces. The wide range of I/O interfaces can be further expanded by the addition of an XMC module.The board supports a configurable control plane fabric interface (VITA 46.6) and a flexible PCI Express data plane fabric interface (VITA 46.4) supporting up to Gen 3 data rates and can be used in systems defined by OpenVPX (VITA 65).



Optional features include Built in Test and a board level security package which provides a means to enhance the security of equipment to prevent access to sensitive data and key Intellectual Property. The TR B1x/msd can be integrated into systems together with Concurrent Technologies’ switches and mass storage boards. To ease integration, many of today’s leading embedded operating systems including Windows, Linux and VxWorks are supported. Systems using multiple processing boards will benefit from the optional Fabric Interconnect Networking Software which provides a high performance, low latency, communications mechanism for multiple host boards to intercommunicate across the high-speed fabric interface.



The TR B1x/msd processor board is released as a commercial air-cooled board, while later releases will include dual-core processor options and ruggedized variants.



Glen Fawcett, Managing Director, Concurrent Technologies, commented: We are delighted to introduce one of the first 4th Generation Intel Core processor-based 3U VPX boards, continuing our policy of supporting the latest Intel processing technology on key embedded architectures. The TR B1x/msd is an upgrade to our current products and is suitable as both an upgrade path for existing applications as well as new projects.”



Sam Cravatta, Product Line Manager, Intel Intelligent Systems Group, commented: “The enhancements in CPU performance and graphics capabilities, as well as security and power efficiency in the 4th generation Intel Core processor family boost signal- and image-processing performance and strengthen security for military/aerospace and other high-end critical embedded solutions, like those enabled by the 3U VPX systems provided by Concurrent Technologies.”