I​n Part III of our tutorial series, Elma’s technical product expert Michael Munroe describes the ins and outs of RF and optical connectivity using backplane apertures. Learn how OpenVPX addresses the high speed and high signal integrity needs of mission-critical applications by bringing RF and optical connectors to system backplanes in a straightforward modular fashion.
Parts I and II can be found under the same link:
Part I, The Fundamentals, discusses the evolution of the standard, it's operational advantages and general architectural terms and definitions.
Part II, Understanding Profiles, examines the purpose of slot profiles and module profiles in defining VPX board connectivity.

• Rugged data communication products for applications in demanding environments, including airborne, military, railway and subsea
• Products of precise Time-over-Ethernet according to IEEE 1588 (PTP) and IEEE 802.1as (gPTP)
• Customised Ethernet solutions to fit specific needs.

OnTime Networks was founded in 2000 and is recognised as an innovator for rugged Ethernet solutions for Real Time Applications within the Aerospace and Defence Industries. OnTime’s equipment is used by major customers such as Airbus Commercial Aircraft, Boeing Commercial Aircraft, L-3 Communications, Zodiac, Airbus Helicopter, EMGS, Schlumberger.

The main product lines are:​
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• Can synchronise up to 32 1GSPS ADC channels out of the box
• Eight SRS6000s can be daisy-chained for synchronization of 256 channels
• Features remarkable picosecond accuracy
• Provides a migration path to VPX 

Abaco Systems announced the SRS6000 Multi-channel Synchronous Receiver System. Designed for customers developing advanced, high channel density electronic warfare and SIGINT applications, it can significantly reduce time to market.
The SRS6000 leverages Abaco’s leadership in FPGA hardware platforms and solutions and brings a new level of application-specific functionality, helping customers accelerate their development process and get to a solution faster by obviating the need for in-house development that can be time-consuming and costly.  
The SRS6000 is unique in a number of ways. Out of the box, it delivers the ability to synchronise up to 32 1GSPS ADC channels with a remarkable picosecond jitter. It is also scalable, with the potential to daisy-chain up to eight systems for a total of 256 synchronised channels in the most demanding applications. The SRS6000 also features an auto-calibration capability, meaning that it will automatically adjust its calibration routine in response to changes in cabling or setup. Migration to a deployed, rugged 3U VPX system is straightforward.
Target applications include MIMO radar, beamforming, direction finding and multi-channel listening.
“Multi-element arrays like those found in radar and other RF apertures are increasingly driving the requirement for tight synchronisation between many channels – sometimes in the thousands,” said Peter Thompson, Vice President, Product Management at Abaco Systems. “The SRS6000 provides the precision and channel density required by many of these applications.”
“Ensuring synchronisation and deterministic latency through calibration is critical in any system - but calibrating a system with multiple converters can be a challenge to achieve,” continued Thompson. “The SRS6000 is designed for customers looking to jumpstart an electronic warfare or SIGINT development and who need to accelerate their proof of concept. It provides a new degree of precision, performance and extensibility – while at the same time helping customers minimise the time, cost and risk involved in bringing advanced electronic warfare solutions to market.”
With two Intel® 2.2GHz Xeon E5 processors and five Xilinx® Ultrascale™ FPGAs, the SRS6000 provides server grade processing for the most computationally-intensive applications. Additionally, PCIe™ Gen3x8 and FireFly™ x8 fiber optic interconnects provide extreme throughput for powerful streaming.

More information.

The most popular single-board computer by far has received an update. Although not originally specified for industrial use, Raspberry Pi-based computers are often used in the sector today. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has now gone one better with the launch of the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ module, granting the wishes of professional users for a faster CPU, dual-band wireless LAN and long-term availability.
The new module is now also available in Janz Tec’s two tried-and-tested systems, the emPC-A/RPI3+ embedded PC and the emVIEW-7/RPI3+ 7” panel PC.

Ensuring the highest levels of signal integrity at 25+ Gbps isn’t easy but somebody has to do it. That’s because today's electronic systems depend on a stable and reliable foundation for executing mission-critical functions day in and day out without fail. In their white paper, “Signal Integrity and Simulation Considerations in Backplane Designs for Military Systems”, Elma’s team of engineers explore advanced measurement and optimisation methods used in successful OpenVPX based system development.

These topics will be covered:  
     - Methods for accurate channel characterisation
     - Connector challenges
     - The necessity of a holistic design approach
     - Backplane design considerations
     - Accurate validation methods
​Download the Whitepaper here.

Abaco announced that it had won orders from a leading defence company delivering a range of solutions for electronic warfare, ISR, C4I, avionics, unmanned vehicles and cyber warfare. Abaco’s 3U VPX rugged SBC314 single board computer will be deployed on board a fleet of state of the art medium altitude unmanned vehicles, where it will be at the heart of the craft’s flight control and mission systems. The UAV is scheduled to go into service in 2019.
The program was originally designed to include the Abaco SBC310 3U VPX single board computer, but the SBC314 was a compelling alternative as it was a plug ‘n’ play, pin-compatible upgrade for the SBC310, meaning a substantial saving in time and cost.
The SBC314 offers a choice of multicore Power Architecture™ QorIQ™ AMP (advanced multiprocessing) processor options to enable an optimum performance per watt solution to be deployed in applications such as mission computing and ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance). The version featuring the T1042 4-core e5500-based processor is designed for environments requiring minimal power consumption, while the board using the T2081 8-virtual core e6500 processor is designed to deliver maximum performance.
Designed as a straightforward, cost-effective upgrade/technology insertion opportunity from earlier Power Architecture 3U OpenVPX single board computers from Abaco for programs requiring either additional processing capability or lower SWaP (size, weight and power) characteristics, the SBC314 is further evidence of Abaco’s commitment to maximising the long term value of customer investments.
The T2081 processor’s e6500 ST core offers a 50% performance improvement compared to the e500mc core in the P4080 processor which is at the heart of the SBC314’s predecessor. It also provides the potential for up to a 5x performance improvement if the AltiVec™ co-processor is fully utilized, delivering up to 48GFLOPS of capability for appropriate applications.  The AltiVec co-processor also delivers value for older code bases, such as those developed for systems using the MPC7448 processor
The T1042 processor is designed to function at less than 7.5W, allowing this version of the SBC314 to operate with a typical total board power consumption of less than 20W – half that of its precessor.

​Find more details on the SBC314 here.

The PC6-TANGO is a low power 4HP/3U CompactPCI® PlusIO CPU board, equipped with an Intel® Atom® 39xx-series System-on-Chip processor (Apollo Lake). The PC6-TANGO front panel is provided with two Gigabit Ethernet jacks (option M12-X), two USB 3.0 receptacles, two DisplayPort connectors, and a Micro SD Card slot.
The PC6-TANGO is equipped with 8GB directly soldered DDR3L ECC RAM, and a CFast™ card socket as on-board SSD mass storage solution.
Optionally available is an on-board 64GByte e•MMC flash memory chip. Furthermore, low profile SATA SSD mezzanine modules are available as additional on-board mass storage solution. The PC6-TANGO backplane connectors comply with the CompactPCI® PlusIO specification, suitable for system expansion with classic CompactPCI® peripheral cards via J1, and in addition a rear I/O module attached to J2, or up to four CompactPCI® Serial cards accessed on a hybrid backplane.

• Intel® Apollo Lake (APL) SoC E39xx Series
  • x7-E3950 • 4 Cores • 1.6GHz (TB 2.0GHz) • 12W TDP/cTDP • 2MB LLC
  • x5-E3940 • 4 Cores • 1.6GHz (TB 1.8GHz) • 9W TDP/cTDP • 2MB LLC
  • x5-E3930 • 2 Cores • 1.3GHz (TB 1.8GHz) • 6W TDP/cTDP • 2MB LLC
• Graphics Burst, CPU Burst, Intel® Speedstep®
• Phoenix® UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) with CSM
• BIOS fully customisable by EKF
• Secure Boot and Measured Boot supported
• Windows®, Linux and other (RT)OS' supported

Find details here.

Abaco Systems announced the VP869 high performance 6U OpenVPX FPGA processing board. Featuring two Xilinx® UltraScale+™ FPGAs and a Zynq® 7000 Series multiprocessor system-on-chip (MPSoC), it provides a form, fit and function upgrade for the VP868, providing existing users with a cost-effective performance enhancement. The VP869 can deliver up to 3.8x more DSP resources and 2.4x more integrated memory than its predecessor.
The VP869 is designed for the most demanding mission critical applications where extreme FPGA processing and I/O bandwidth capabilities are needed. Typical applications include electronic warfare, radar/sonar processing, software defined radio, advanced digital beamforming, multi-channel digital receivers/transmitters and satellite communications systems.
Two industry standard (VITA 57) FMC+ sites are provided on the VP869 for high performance analog I/O, digital communications or video input.

The VP869’s flexibility derives in part from the opportunity it provides to choose either of two Virtex Ultrascale+ FPGAs, allowing the optimum application-specific trade-off between performance, power consumption and price.
A key feature of the VP869 is its extreme backplane bandwidth, with over 72 high speed serial lanes routed to the backplane delivering 594 Gbps of data throughput for advanced processing and offload applications. 24 bidirectional high speed serial lanes provide up to 300 Gbps of data bandwidth to and from the FMC+ I/O modules, enabling the utilization of the latest ADC and DAC technology for next generation wideband applications.
In some applications, the VP869’s onboard Zynq 7000 device with its embedded ARM® cores can provide the control functionality that would normally be delivered by a single board computer, creating the opportunity to minimize slot usage and thus size, weight and power.
The VP869’s Zynq 7000 MPSoC also includes broad security functionality – such as encrypted bit streams and secure boot - that enables sensitive IP to be safeguarded.
Reduced time to deployment is significantly enhanced by Abaco’s provision of a comprehensive set of aids designed to simplify and speed development. These include a fully featured open board support package that provide a highly functional reference design example to simplify integration of application-specific IP. Stellar IP - an FPGA development tool – and the 4FM GUI user interface for controlling and monitoring the hardware are also provided, as are a Xilinx Vivado project and VHDL source code.

Find more information here.

​Technical Highlights

• Ranges between 30 W and 120 W outputs and 11.4 VDC to 50 VDC inputs
• Can be used in a PC/104 stack; as a standalone unit in COM Express or custom systems
• Operating range of -40°C to +85°C per MIL-STD-810G

Elma has added four new, rugged power supply modules to its growing family of power solutions. The PCI-104-based PSUs can be used as the bottom module in any PC/104, PC/104-Plus, PCI-104, PCIe/104 or PCI/104-Express embedded system stack arrangement. They can also provide power for other small form factor (SFF) embedded computing systems, such as COM Express or can be used standalone.
The rugged mechanical PCI-104 form factor is designed to operate in demanding power conditions typically experienced in ground vehicles and aircraft applications. This enables the power supplies to function without active cooling in temperature ranges from -40°C to +85°C per MIL-STD-810G, when attached to a base enclosure for heat dissipation.
Each module withstands high levels of shock and vibration for defense ground vehicles (MIL-STD-810G) and military aircraft (MIL-STD-704F) for reliable operation in harsh environments.
Galvanically isolated, the DC/DC modules provide reliable signal isolation. The new PCI-104 power modules range from two outputs at 30 W up to five outputs at 120 W, combined (3.3 V, 5 V, ±12 V), and support 11.4-50 VDC input ranges for 28 VDC applications.
All units ship with MIL-STD-461 EMI filtering and transient protections specifically designed for demanding 250 V spike and 100 V surge requirements per MIL-STD-1275.
The power supplies are compatible with a host of embedded CPU modules on the market. For example, Elma integrates them into various mission-critical sub-system assemblies, such as its NetSys family of rugged Cisco Embedded Services Router (ESR) computers and the ComSys family of communications platforms.

Find the comparison chart here.

Key Technology Benefits and Features:

• They extend parallel PCI bus with serial PCI Express, SATA, Ethernet, and USB, offering higher performance while maintaining mechanical backwards compatibility to CompactPCI. Supported by thousands of available chipsets, chips, and operating systems. 
• 20x data transfer improvement over PCI Express lanes as compared to CompactPCI. Total data transfer improvement of 80x when Ethernet, SATA, and USB are used. 
• Wide O/S support 
• Scalable from a single board to large systems 
• Hybrid systems allow combination of CompactPCI Serial and CompactPCI peripheral cards, using a CompactPCI PlusIO CPU card in the system slot. 
• 3U and 6U Eurocard form factors are defined utilising the popular IEEE 1101.1 and IEEE 1101.10 mechanical standards providing implementation flexibility and widely available off-the-shelf parts.

​         (Source: www.picmg.org) 
The tutorials can be found here.