Curtiss-Wright Controls Announces its First OpenVPX/VITA-65 Serial RapidIO® GEN-2 Switch

OTTAWA, ONTARIO – March 30, 2010 — Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, a business group of Curtiss-Wright Controls and a leading designer and manufacturer of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) VME, VPX, OpenVPX™, and CompactPCI® products for the rugged deployed aerospace and defense (A&D) market, has announced the availability of the new OpenVPX™/VITA-65 compliant VPX6-6902 Serial RapidIO® (SRIO) switch card. This rugged 6U VPX board, available in both air- and conduction-cooled versions, combines Ethernet and SRIO switching in a single slot for management, control and dataplane switching in high performance embedded military systems. Supporting both Gen-1 SRIO (1.25, 2.5, 3.125 Gbaud) and Gen-2 SRIO (5.0, 6.25 Gbaud), the VPX6-6902 enables systems integrators to quickly and easily architect small to large high performance systems that adhere to the VITA-65 OpenVPX™ systems specification.

“The VPX6-6902 SRIO switch extends Curtiss-Wright Controls’ leadership in high-performance mission computing environments” said Lynn Patterson, vice president and general manager Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing. “By integrating SRIO and Ethernet switching, we can support embedded processing systems with the highest possible data bandwidths in the smallest footprints possible.”

SRIO is a next-generation data-plane interconnect, and combines extremely high data rates with low system latency. Eclipsing existing Generation 1 SRIO switches, the VPX6-6902 doubles the available bandwidth with SRIO Gen-2 technology, offering up to 20Gbps throughput on each of it’s 28 4-lane ports.  The VPX6-6902 is designed to form the interconnect backbone of extremely high-performance mission computing environments, and simplifies systems design with features designed for redundant and fail-safe architectures.

The VPX6-6902 is available in a variety of system configurations, and supports a number of standard OpenVPX™ profiles.  Popular configurations include:

1.       24 x SRIO (x4) ports to the VPX backplane and 4x SRIO (x4) ports to the front, with no Ethernet switching.

2.       20 x SRIO (x4) ports to the VPX backplane and 4x SRIO (x4) ports to the front,
along with 16x SerDes GbE ports and 2x 1000Base-T ports to the rear with an additional 2x 10GbE and one (1) 1000Base-T port to the front.

The VPX6-6902’s on-board management processor can be used to manage and configure the Ethernet switch, and also performs SRIO management and configuration.  IPMI is also supported for system level management. 

VPX6-6902 Key Features:

• 6U VPX Form Factor, complies with OpenVPX^TM / VITA-65 standards
• Combined SRIO Data plane and Ethernet Management and Control plane switch fabrics
• Enables easy implementation of scalable high performance centralized DSP clusters for small, medium and large systems
• Available with SRIO only, or SRIO + Ethernet switch fabrics
  • SRIO switch offers up to 24x 4-lane ports to the backplane, and 4x 4-lane ports to the front.
  • Second generation SRIO switching technology support both Gen-1 (1.25, 2.5 and 3.125 Gbaud) or Gen-2 (5.0 and 6.25 Gbaud) speeds
  • Integrated Ethernet switch offers up to 16x SerDes GbE and 2x 1000Base-T ports to the VPX backplane, along with + 2x 10GbE and 1x 1000Base-T ports to the front.
• On-board management processor for both SRIO and GbE fabrics
• Supports star and dual-star topologies for redundant and fail-safe architectures
• Pre-configured for 3rd party SRIO diagnostic Probe to provide system monitoring, analysis and diagnostics
• Air-cooled and Conduction-cooled models available in all ruggedization levels (L0, L100, L200)

The VPX6-6902 complements Curtiss-Wright Controls’ growing family of high-speed Single-Board Computer (SBC) and Digital Signal Processing (DSP) cards, including the recently announced CHAMP-AV5 with the Intel® Core™ i7 processor and the HPE720 Hybrid Processor Board with dual Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs and dual-core PPC processor.  The VPX6-6902 board supports multiple backplane profiles, and conforms to the OpenVPX® / VITA-65 standard.

Inquiries: Please forward all Sales and reader service inquiries to Jerri-Lynne Charbonneau, Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, Tel: (613) 254-5112; Fax: (613) 599-7777; e-mail: sales@cwcembedded.com.

About Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing

Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing is the industry’s most comprehensive and experienced single source for embedded solutions, ranging from Processing, Subsystems, Data Communication, DSP, and Video & Graphics to the most advanced board level components and fully integrated custom systems. The Embedded Computing group serves the defense and aerospace markets and is part of Curtiss-Wright Controls Inc. For more information about Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, visitwww.cwcembedded.com.

About Curtiss-Wright Controls, Inc.

Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Curtiss-Wright Controls is the motion control segment of Curtiss-Wright Corporation (NYSE: CW). With manufacturing facilities around the world, Curtiss-Wright Controls is a leading technology-based organization providing niche motion control products, subsystems and services internationally for the aerospace and defense markets. For more information, visit www.cwcontrols.com.