First 40 Gigabit Ethernet-capable 3U OpenVPX Single Board Computer Announced

By Michael Guta
Contributing Writer

The Versatile Performance Switching (VPX) or VMEbus International Trade Association (VITA) standard supports embedded systems designed to withstand very harsh environments, including but not limited to military applications where size, weight, and power (SWaP) are extremely important factors. The 3U form factor is small, which makes it ideal for applications where rack space real estate is limited in battlefield environments. So making a 3U OpenVPX with support for the 40 Gigabit Ethernet ecosystem is an incredible feat, which is why Abaco Systems can claim an industry first.

The evolution of the 40 Gigabit Ethernet ecosystem to the 3U OpenVPX was an eventuality, as Abaco had announced a 6U OpenVPX single board computer with the same capability in its SBC627, DSP282A multiprocessor and SWE540 fully managed Ethernet switch. But moving down to 3U gives the company access to markets that are continuously looking to decrease the size of their products.

The rugged SBC367D 3U OpenVPX single board computer can be deployed in mission-critical signal intelligence, radar, and Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) applications in very demanding environments. The unit is a single board computer with ultra-high performance Intel (News - Alert) Xeon D-1500 processor family with up to 16 cores, up to 32GBytes of DDR4 SDRAM memory, and support for 10/40 Gigabyte Ethernet across the backplane. 

“This new 40 Gigabit-capable single board computer strengthens our mission ready systems capability, and also responds to our customers' growing preference for Ethernet as their backplane technology of choice in developing high performance systems. The Ethernet programming model is widely understood; it is an open, non-proprietary technology; and it provides inherent and simple scalability,” said Mrinal Iyengar, Vice President, Product Management at Abaco Systems.

Abaco says its SBC367D can deliver demanding applications such as electronic warfare and ISR with a range of security features that support user-defined Anti-Tamper and Information Assurance strategies, inherently secure FPGA solution (SmartFusion2 from Microsemi), and Intel's Trusted Execution Technology.

By using 40 Gigabit Ethernet, the SBC367D gets rid of PCI (News - Alert) Express-based solutions that are limited to a low number of host cards and peripherals. With the Ethernet-based architecture, this new solution can support larger multimodule systems capable of developing HPEC (high performance embedded computing) systems in the 3U VPX form factor.

The SBC367D 3U OpenVPX is available from the company for customers that want to build their own systems, or as part of Abaco's family of mission ready systems in a range of air and conduction cooled build levels with extended temperature capability.