CHATSWORTH, Calif., 25 Oct. 2012. Aitech Defense Systems Inc. in Chatsworth, Calif., is introducing the rugged C660 high-performance single-slot Gigabit Ethernet switch for moving massive amounts of data around tightly coupled processing or I/O data concentrators in military embedded systems, as well as in aerospace, spacecraft, and telecommunications applications.

The 6U CompactPCI PICMG 2.16 compatible switch serves as a robust communications backbone, and can be installed in rack-mounted equipment and backplanes or packaged in stand-alone rugged subsystems.

This full-wire-speed, non-blocking switch provides high-speed connectivity and traffic management for streaming video, audio, and data. It performs advanced switching and routing tasks including traffic prioritization, trunking, filtering, and mirroring in the hardware, rather than using the software router stack, freeing the CPU resources for application processing, company officials say.

The C660 uses Marvell's BobCat Gigabit Ethernet (BobCat-GE) switch controller and Marvell MTS management suite to perform Layer 2 and 3 routing and switching for 24 Gigabit Ethernet ports and as many as four 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports. Frame switching for Layer 2 is based on MAC address information, while Layer 3 is based on network-layer information (IP).

Six multi-rate network quad SERDES ports, connected to six quad PHY controllers, support the 24 Gigabit Ethernet ports in 1000Base-T format or 16 1000Base-T format ports plus eight serial 1000Base-X port formats.

An eight port version can be factory configured to support Fiber Optic links (1000Base-X). Four XAUI links provide connection to the four 10-Gigabit Ethernet ports through front panel SFP+ modules.

All switches will be available in vibration- and shock-resistant versions, compliant to commercial, rugged and military specifications with a maximum operating temperature range of -55 to 85 degrees Celsius. The switches are available in industry-standard 0.8" pitch for the VME and CompactPCI versions.

The VPX version comes in 0.8-inch, 0.85-inch and 1-inch-pitch conduction-cooled or 1-inch-pitch air-cooled form factors as well as in the VITA 48 (VPX REDI) format with ESD covers to support two level maintenance LRM requirements for the 0.85-inch-pitch version.

For more information contact Aitech online at www.rugged.com.