Product category:
CompactPCI Boards and Assemblies
News Release from: Aitech Defense Systems | Subject: S950
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 20 May 2005
Compact PCI SBC aims for the stars
A new rad-tolerant conduction-cooled CompactPCI SBC is designed for both manned and robotic space vehicles in harsh space radiation environments.
Aitech Defense Systems has a new radiation-tolerant, space-qualified single-slot, 3U CompactPCI (cPCI) single board computer (SBC) that provides an increase in performance of up to 5x and a cost reduction of up to 2x when compared with the point-driven, purposed-based designs currently in use The new rad-tolerant, conduction-cooled S950 is designed for both manned and robotic space vehicles in harsh space radiation environments found in low earth orbit (LEO), high earth orbit (HEO), and deep space applications
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 13 Feb 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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cPCI board toughens up for space duties
The S950 offers extreme protection against single event upsets, making it ideal for a variety of low earth orbit, Mars terrestrial and geocentric orbit applications.
VME SBC handles harsh-environment applications
The rugged new C106 single board computer is a VME64x-compliant solution featuring up to 1.5GHz of processing power and 4Gbyte of onboard NAND Flash memory.
These include redundant mission computers, flight guidance and navigation computers, as well as command and data handling computers.
The new board combines a high performance, low power PowerPC 750FX processor with a silicon on insulator (SOI) processor for reduced power consumption, typically less than 12W, as well as for increased processor speed and radiation tolerance.
Its custom metal frame provides substantial rigidity and shock resistance, as well as an array of stiffeners to support rugged PCI mezzanine cards (PMCs).
Further reading
Rugged enclosure seals in 6U systems
Comprehensive environmental protection for 6U VMEbus or CompactPCI single board computers is now available in the rugged, single-slot E118 chassis enclosures from Aitech Defense Systems.
Mission-critical embedded COTS solutions
Aitech Defense Systems has published a shortform brochure covering a full range of hardware, software and subsystems service for mission-critical COTS applications.
Flash memory boards provide military storage
VMEbus memory boards use NAND Flash memory supported by software drivers to provide full hard-disk emulation for up to 128Gbyte of cost-effective solid-state mass storage in COTS applications.
The S950 is rad-tolerant with a minimum board-level total ionisation dose (TID) of 20krad (Si).
Flight units with higher TID tolerance are available on request.
In addition, the board is latch-up immune with a high linear energy transfer (LET) of 37MeVcm2/mg and features a low single event upset (SEU) rate of less than one upset per 25 years in operation at International Space Station (ISS) orbit.
The triple redundant 128Mbyte SDRAM features a voting mechanism incorporated into a rad-tolerant FPGA.
The 1Mbyte dual redundant boot Flash memory, guaranteed by two independent banks, employs a watchdog mechanism that toggles between the two banks until a successful firmware reboot occurs.
The board also features 64Mbyte of nonvolatile ECC-protected user Flash memory, with an optional Flash FileSystem Driver (FFD) software package to implement a file system.
The S950 features a 33MHz, 32bit internal PCIbus that supports single and burst transfers, and provides the interconnection to peripheral I/O, enabling fast access between the PCI devices and the host processor.
The board's external 33MHz, 32bit cPCI bus interface is implemented on a rad-tolerant FPGA for local processor access to cPCI resources.
The board can be configured as a single-slot system controller, supporting up to seven additional cPCI boards, or as a standard cPCI board in any other cPCI bus slot.
The S950 comes with an extensive firmware package that includes boot software, an AIMon monitor/debugger tool, an AIDiag diagnostic tool, and BIT, which can be executed either during power-up or after the board has been booted.
A COP/JTAG interface provides for debugging and development.
The new SBC also comes with a complete board support package (BSP) for WindRiver's VxWorks real-time operating system (RTOS) version 5.5.1 including drivers for users to take full advantage of the board's features.
Support for other RTOS systems may be available on request.
Pricing for the S950 rad-tolerant 3U cPCI SBC starts at $ 23,050.
Delivery is 16 to 18 weeks ARO.
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