LEESBURG, Va., 3 July 2009. Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, introduced the VPX6-187, its first VPX single-board computer (SBC) based on Freescale's latest eight-core QorIQ P4080 communications processor.

This rugged, 6U VPX general purpose SBC supports its eight 1.5 GHz Power Architecture processor cores with high-performance datapath acceleration logic, network, and peripheral bus interfaces, company officials say. The VPX6-187 is designed to leverage the flexibility and feature set of the QorIQ P4080 processor to provide a trusted computing environment in harsh military and aerospace applications.

"The VPX6-187 will be the first of a series of products to employ Freescale's QorIQ P4080," says Lynn Patterson, vice president and general manager, Modular Solutions, Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing

Offered in both air-and conduction-cooled rugged configurations, the VPX6-187 is also available in a VPX-REDI (VITA 48) configuration to support applications that requiring Line-Replaceable Modules (LRMs). VPX-REDI provides enhanced hardware protection including front and rear metal covers to support in-the-field maintenance and replacement.

The VPX6-187's high-speed VPX backplane supports connectivity via Gen 2 PCIe and Serial Rapid IO for multi-gigabit per second board-to-board data communications. The VPX6-187 also supports a rich I/O complement including four Gigabit Ethernet ports, USB, options for multi-function RS-232/422/485 serial ports, MIL-STD-1553, Serial ATA, and TTL and differential discrete I/O to provide connectivity integration with other system elements independent of its two PMC/XMC sites. The board's dual mezzanine sites are targeted for the acquisition, processing, and distribution of high-speed sensor data such as video, radar, and sonar.

By providing support for data, control and expansion plane interconnects, the VPX6-187 can be used in centralized, distributed, or hybrid switched backplane topologies.