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May 9 2008 3:01PM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (0) |
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As promised when the doors were closed on the long running Bus and Board conference, VITA (VMEbus International Trade Association) brought back a revised board-level meeting this week based on “critical embedded systems”. These are life-critical or safety-critical systems whose failure or malfunction may result in death or serious injury, equipment damage, environmental harm, or large financial losses. This pretty much covers everything except consumer electronics devices such as cell phones, media players, and gaming systems. The event presentations included several topics including Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) products, military embedded systems, and board-level market analysis. You can view the slide presentation for each speaker at the Critical Embedded Systems website.

 A number of boards were introduced at the conference based on new and revised embedded standards. MEN Micro introduced the XM1 computer module designed to the proposed ANSI-VITA 59 Rugged System-On-Module Express (RSE) standard. The module features the Intel Atom processor coupled with 1 GB of soldered DDR2 SDRAM for lower power dissipation and a reduced form factor. The RSE standard promises to bring off-the-shelf computer-on-module (COM) technology to rugged, harsh and mission-critical environments.

 The VITA 57.1 FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC) is another new standard making it easier for developers to integrate FPGAs into embedded system designs. FMCs enable I/O devices that reside on an industry standard mezzanine card to be attached to, and directly controlled by, FPGAs that reside on a baseboard. FMCs allow a single FPGA design to be reused on multiple projects by simply replacing the I/O section. An FMC module is about half the size of a PMC mezzanine module. VMETRO claimed to introduce the industry’s first FMC module at the conference. The ADC510, available in air-cooled and conduction-cooled rugged versions, integrates two 12-bit 500MHz A/D chips for use in DSP applications such as Signal Intelligence (SIGINT), Electronic Counter Measures (ECM), and Radar.

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