VPX Systems

Sarsen Technology supplies and supports a wide range of VPX format COTS solutions designed for rugged military & aerospace applications. VPX, formerly known as VITA 46, is an ANSI standard (ANSI/VITA 46.0-2007) that provides VMEbus-based systems with support for switched fabrics over a high speed connector.

We supply and support VPX format systems & rugged chassis, processing boards and backplanes from the industry-leading designers:

• BittWare, Inc. - Altera FPGA Single Board Computing VPX Boards
• Extreme Engineering Solutions, Inc. (X-ES) – Intel Core i7 & Freescale QorIQ PowerPC SBCs, 3U Power Supplies, Switches, Carriers, Storage, Development Platforms, Rugged Chassis, Backplanes & RTM VPX solutions
• General Standards Corporation – I/O Expansion & Carrier VPX boards

The VPX standard is defined by the VITA (VME International Trade Association) working group (composed of major companies such as Boeing and Northrop Grumman). It has been designed specifically with defence applications in mind, with an enhanced module standard that enables applications and platforms with superior high speed and signal integrity performance. The VPX format retains VME’s existing 6U and 3U form factors, supporting existing PCI Mezzanine Card and XMC mezzanines (PMC with high-speed serial fabric interconnect), and maintaining the maximum possible compatibility with VMEbus.

New generations of embedded computing systems based on the VPX standard reflect the growing significance of high speed serial switched fabric interconnects such as PCI Express, RapidIO, Infiniband and 10 Gigabit Ethernet. These technologies have replaced traditional parallel communications bus architectures for local communications, because they offer significantly greater I/O capability. Switched fabrics provide an optimum technology to support the implementation of multiprocessing systems that require the fastest possible communications between multiple processors (e.g., digital signal processing applications). The VPX standard gives the large existing base of VMEbus users access to these switched fabrics.

The technologies called for in VPX include:

• Both 3U and 6U formats
• New 7-row high speed connector rated up to 6.25 Gbit/s
• Choice of high speed serial fabrics
• PMC, FMC (VITA 57) and XMC (VITA 42) mezzanines
• Hybrid backplanes to accommodate VME64, VXS and VPX boards

Please contact us to discuss your VPX based application and to find out how our solutions can get your product to market on-time and on-budget.