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SPECIAL FEATURE VME’s Long From Dead; Destined To Co- Exist With VPX And Serial Fabrics A discussion with Aitech and Curtiss-Wright about heat, processors, fabrics, and VME’s synergy with VPX and all things “U”. By Chris A. Ciufo, Editor “Born” in 1981, the parallel VMEbus lives on as strong as ever, thanks to a robust VITA standards organization, highly active suppliers and contributors, and the defense industry. VME, VPX, OpenVPX and all the related standards are ideal for long life-cycle, high-reliability systems that need finely tuned performance along with size, weight and power. The newest specs—including VITA 46 (VPX), VITA 65 (OpenVPX), and several new proposals for small form factor (SFF) versions—are all designed with multi-gigabit serial fabrics in mind. So it comes as a bit of a surprise that the much older 32- and 64-bit parallel bus VME versions continue to live on stronger than ever. This editor first became associated with VME in the late 1980s, writing his first article on VME around 1990. Yet it surprises me not one bit that VME is as popular today as then, partially because of the customer base that relishes consistency with carefully managed upgrades. And upgrades are happening, all the time. Intel processors have replaced the “traditional” Motorola/Freescale PowerPC CPUs of 10 years ago. Our panelists tell us that lower-power ARM processors are being designed in over Intel CPUs where power or SFF size is advantageous. Yet as algorithm-intensive FPGAs replace some singleboard computer CPUs, ultra-fast data pipes like Serial RapidIO, PCI Express, InfiniBand, and 10 GigE represent the next wave of VMEbased upgrades. Still, as we learned from our discussions with rugged suppliers Aitech and Curtiss-Wright, there are real-time, closed-loop applications that will deploy traditional VME right alongside the most leadingedge new VME standard. Read on to see how our panelists responded to this set of industry insider questions. EECatalog: What is the state of the VME/VPX industry today? Doug Patterson is VP, Military & Aerospace Business Sector, for Aitech Defense Systems, Inc. Patterson, Aitech: The VPX market is emerging slowly despite all the press that continues to predict that it’s replacing “obsolete technologies” like [the predecessors] VMEbus and CompactPCI. Customers with real-time, hard deadline, tight control-loop applications still Doug Patterson (L), Mike Slonsky(C), and Steve Edwards(R) value parallel buses like cPCI or VMEbus, and don’t yet use the new serial, point-to-point fabric topologies. Parallel buses including VME and cPCI are by definition, “commandresponse”, synchronous data buses with bus message formats and machine instructions often dedicated to this architecture— including Read-Modify-Write, an instruction that “locks” the bus so critical messages arrive in order and are, by definition, synchronized in process and in time. Some of the newer high speed serial fabrics represent numerous data pipes that seem like a collection of asynchronous “snakes” all swirling and spitting out data at random. Serial fabrics are ideal for C4ISR applications where passing massive quantities of high speed data serially to and from predefined points around a system vehicle, platform or backplane is needed for postprocessing. If data is generated and passed throughout a subsystem platform asynchronously, data packets can, and most likely will, get out of sync causing all sorts of unintended actions. Mike Slonosky, is product marketing manager for the Power Architecture single board computers at Curtiss-Wright Controls Defense Solutions. Steve Edwards, is chief technology officer for COTS Solutions at Curtiss-Wright Controls Defense Solutions. Edwards, Curtiss-Wright: VPX (VITA 46) was started in March 2003 and ratified in 2007. OpenVPX (VITA 65) was started in January 2009 (outside of VITA) and brought into VITA at the end of 2009. The first revision of VITA 65 was released in 2010 and revision 2 (current rev) was released in 2012. We are currently working on rev 3 which should be approved mid-2013. The major additions to the rev 3 specification are faster speed fabrics such as Gen 3 PCIe, 40 GigE (40GBase-KR) and QDR/FDR InfiniBand. 6 Engineers’ Guide to VME, VPX & VXS 2013
Established platform parallel bus protocols like VMEbus and CompactPCI still have their place in today's and tomorrow's harsh environment, real-time/hard-deadline embedded sub-system applications...especially when these products are upgraded and maintained to keep pace with the newest, fastest processor and memory technologies. While there are some applications where high speed serial fabrics like VPX are ideal, there are others where VMEbus or CompactPCI still rule the roost. One company continues to actively invest in maintaining – and not obsolescing – their military and space embedded computing products with a proactive 12-year minimum COTS Lifecycle+ Program. And one company continues to also invest in delivering the very best of the newest embedded COTS computing platforms with the new, serial fabric protocols. And one company actively invests in technology insertion at the board level, creating backplane, pin-compatible products with the latest, next generation memory and processor technologies "on-board". And that same company still delivers their legacy bus products at full speed and full capability and full mil temp range (-55 to +85°C) with those latest technologies. The one company to do all that? Aitech. Check our website to learn more about our technology roadmaps and how they protect your investments. Aitech Defense Systems, Inc. 19756 Prairie Street Chatsworth, CA 91311 email: sales@rugged.com Toll Free: 888-Aitech8 - (888) 248-3248 Fax: (818) 407-1502 www.rugged.com
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Page 3 and 4: TAKE T TAKE YOUR YO YOUR R VIRTUAL
Page 5 and 6: The only compact, rugged chassis of
Page 10 and 11: SPECIAL FEATURE We are also in the
Page 14 and 15: Advertorial 3U VPX Solutions from E
Page 16: SPECIAL FEATURE VPX Backplanes Go O
Page 19 and 20: Table 1: Notional VITA 65 Channel G
Page 21 and 22: Also supported is VITA 48 REDI (Rug
Page 23 and 24: Tackling the Challenge of Building
Page 25 and 26: Figure 4: Tecnobit special chassis
Page 27 and 28: The process of adapting HPC technol
Page 29 and 30: SPECIAL FEATURE www.eecatalog.com/v
Page 31 and 32: intended message. To get past those
Page 33 and 34: Test and Analysis Teledyne LeCroy
Page 35 and 36: CPU or Single Board Computers QorIQ
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Page 39 and 40: Data Aquisition Model 53720 3-Chann
Page 41 and 42: Enclosures “Mupac” 760 Small Fo
Page 43 and 44: 2363 2 3 5-W_AeC1 A 3 TAKE Flight!

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