3U OpenVPX chassis with six slots for rugged mobile embedded computing applications offered by PCI Systems

LAUREL, Md., 3 Sept. 2010. PCI Systems Inc. in Laurel, Md., is offering 3U OpenVPXconduction cooled armored portable six-slot chassis for rugged conduction-cooled embedded systems. The chassis is a COTS product for instrumentation and can be used for several applications by changing the switch mezzanine.

The rugged enclosure with integrated GPS has a mezzanine card with three-axis shock sensor and chassis-management field-programmable gate array (FPGA), eight-lane-per-slot PCI Express Gen2 switches, with optional Gigabit Ethernet switch and Serial RapidIO switch. The values of the shock sensor can be read over an I2C bus. PCI Express Gen 2 "noStub" routing makes the most of data throughput.

The rear I/O printed circuit board has MIL-C-38999 series 3 connectors holds a GPS module that can be connected to an active or passive antenna. The GPS module is connected to serial ports on the switch mezzanine through PCI Express and does not need any other serial port in the system. A GPS 1 Hz clock from this module is connected to the appropriate pins on the VPX slots.

High speed ERNI 10-gigabit connectors connect the backplane and the mezzanine cards and all active components are conduction cooled. A special rubber type insert holds the backplane and the mezzanine cards in place, and also dampens the backplane/mezzanine assembly against vibration. A chromatized coating is on all surfaces of the chassis to help minimize electromagnetic interference.

For more information contact PCI Systems online at www.pcisystems.com.