Radstone First With Rugged 3U VPX

New products bring VPX performance, functionality to defense applications of the future Providing further confirmation of the company’s leadership in the military/aerospace computing market, Radstone Embedded Computing today became the first company to announce a range of rugged VPX boards based on the 3U form factor.  The new family – comprising an Intel® Pentium®-based single board computer, a graphics accelerator platform and a Gigabit Ethernet switch – marks the first of what Radstone expects to be numerous VPX announcements in the coming months.  The company also confirmed its intention to announce, later in the year, a family of rugged VPX boards based on the 6U form factor “The more we look at what VPX is and what it can do for our customers, the more we are convinced that the major commitment we have made to this exciting new technology is the right decision,” said Peter Cavill, President of Radstone Embedded Computing.  “We’re particularly compelled by the opportunity for VPX in the 3U form factor, which is why we’ve chosen to make these platforms available first.” 3U VPX is expected to find substantial acceptance among military and aerospace companies for a number of reasons.  Small size and low weight are becoming increasingly important considerations in the platforms of the future, such as unmanned vehicles, with growth expected to be driven by programs such as FCS (Future Combat Systems); higher integration levels mean that performance is not compromised by the smaller form factor;  and heat/power dissipation remains within today’s thermal performance envelope.  Radstone’s initial VPX product offering includes a range of platforms.  The SBC340 is based on the 65nm 2.0 GHz Core™ Duo T2500 (‘Yonah’) processor which is the successor to the Pentium M processor from Intel and is specifically designed for minimal power consumption:  it features the 945GM Northbridge chip set, and takes full advantage of PCI Express’s 16x throughput.  The GRA110 graphics board also features x16 PCIe, and supports dual channel video output.  The GBX410 Gigabit Ethernet Switch is based on Radstone’s acclaimed CPX24, and features twelve Gigabit Ethernet channels and one 10 Gigabit Ethernet channel to the backplane.  All three boards are expected to ship in the third quarter.