Ivan Straznicky, Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions

Reliability is a key requirement for military and aerospace systems and assemblies. Curtiss-Wright has been highly focused on ruggedness and reliability as a leading supplier of COTS [commercial off-the-shelf] electronics for more than 30 years. Over a decade ago, as lead-free (LF) components started to become mainstream, we developed strategies and a vast amount of technical expertise for dealing with this huge change. The result of these extensive efforts is that we are able to offer customers the choice, based on their requirements and preferences, of both tin-lead solder and LF solder-based designs, with both exhibiting the high reliability that customers need and expect from Curtiss-Wright. We now have over ten years of LF product reliability data to back up our claim of being the trusted, proven leader in rugged electronics reliability.

Jerry Gipper Editorial Director

Note: This update is based on the results of the March 2021 standards meeting. Contact VITA if you are interested in participating in any of these working groups. Visit the VITA website (http://www.vita.com) for details on upcoming VITA meetings.

Jerry Gipper Editorial Director

Since the announcement of VMEbus in 1981, there have been a great number of people and ideas that have had an impact on the development and advancement of open standards used in critical embedded computing systems. The intention of the VITA Technologies Hall of Fame is to honor and preserve the remembrance of those people and technologies that have had the greatest influence on the VITA open standards industry. Many others are to come – innovators and influencers, who have made a significant impact on developing, designing, and creating the technology and then ferrying the technical specifications into open standards. These are the people who have overcome the technical and procedural problems to help bring forth the products that set new expectations. It is our pleasure to honor these primary contributors to this industry.

Jerry Gipper Editorial Director

What a difference a year makes!

Justin Moll Pixus Technologies

Despite the fact that OpenVPX is an open standard architecture, there is a significant amount of variation of system platforms. The application needs for OpenVPX systems continue to evolve rapidly. New challenges brought by the SOSA [Sensor Open Systems Architecture] Consortium’s efforts; new complementary VITA [VMEbus International Trade Association] standards; size, weight, and power (SWaP) concerns; the expanding number of backplane profiles; and SpaceVPX implementations are requiring a versatile approach by the backplane/enclosure developers.

Denis Smetana Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions

In order to keep up with the continued acceleration of new technology and to be able to protect the warfighter from the latest threats, it is essential that we can turn our deployed platforms into adaptable entities that can evolve over time and are not static. The SOSA [Sensor Open Systems Architecture] Technical Standard is the next major step in realizing this goal.

Jim Mosier, TE Connectivity and Mark Benton, TE Connectivity

Implementing optics for Level Four electronic subassembly packaging in VPX systems enables significantly higher bandwidth over purely copper interconnects. The signal-processing requirements of today’s active electronically scanned antenna (AESA) radar, infrared search and track (IRST), and surveillance systems are demanding. This situation challenges designers to squeeze more processing power and electronics into VPX (ANSI/VITA 46) [...]

Max Taylor-Smith, Entropy Electro-Mechanical Solutions

FPGAs – field-programmable gate arrays – are an incredibly diverse method of extracting multifunctionality from a single piece of silicon. The usefulness of these devices is encouraging a renaissance of their use in military-focused embedded systems as developers scramble to be at the front of the queue for new interoperability contracts in FACE [Future Airborne [...]

Jerry Gipper Editorial Director

Last spring, I wrote about our entry into the first phase of COVID-19 pandemic with sheltering in place to slow the spread. That went reasonably well for a couple of months, but the natives got restless and now we are breaking new case and death numbers every day, in every corner of the U.S. In [...]

Alexander Jager, Heitec

The VPX standard (VITA 46) is an advanced development of the VME standard, which was introduced in 1981. Similar to VME, VPX defines the electrical and mechanical specifications for assemblies and systems; in addition, the mechanics are based on the 19-inch standards IEC 1101-1 and IEEE 1101-10. These standards specify boards and backplanes in the Eurocard format 3U as well as in 6U and a depth of 160 mm each (assemblies 6U by 160 mm – 233.35 mm by 160 mm or 9.187 inch by 6.299 inch or 3U by 160 mm – 100 by 160 mm or 3.937 inch by 6.299 inch).