Legacy

With the help of our strategic partners, we aim to make the most effective use of the lifetime of products and solutions available to you and your applications.

Using COTS modular hardware provides an opportunity to cater for product changes and obsolescence during the life of the application. Many of the technologies we offer are now considered to be mature and may even have been superseded with products that take advantage of the latest developments. However, we recognise the investment in time and expense deploying systems and continue to make products available for legacy systems where possible in an effort to extend the life.

Legacy systems and solutions

VMEbus or Versa Module Europa bus has been widely used since the 1980s. We are able to offer current products based on both Intel®, PowerPC® and QorIQ™ based processors. The functionality of the VME format Single Board Computer can be expanded by adding daughter cards onboard or via a carrier card. Known as daughter cards or mezzanine modules, these can add a variety of interfaces such as FPGA, graphics, communications and aircraft databus. They are available as IP (industry pack), or in the common mezzanine form factors (CMC) of PCI Mezzanine Card (PMC) or Switched Mezzanine Card (XMC).

PMC modules were also used on Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture (aTCA) boards before the development of the Advanced Mezzanine Card or AMC. Like the PMC and XMC, AMC modules add functionality to carrier-grade communications equipment and also as cards that slot into the backplane of a MicroTCA® system.

AdvancedTCA® or aTCA systems have also been ruggedised for use in defence applications where the 8U high cards with up to 4 mezzanine cards provide a powerful, dense computing solution. We also provide a range of Xeon® blades, switches and chassis to support customer installed equipment.

Now largely replaced by COM-Express, ETX modules have been used in a variety of industrial, transport and medical applications principally using low power SoC devices like the Intel Atom®. Our current offering will support you for the future, maintaining support for legacy interfaces whilst also offering interconnect for newer higher-speed devices.

Our technologies

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aTCA

AdvancedTCA® products comply with PICMG 3. x standard and are designed around high availability operation. Our offering of aTCA products includes the chassis (or shelf), processor blades, switch fabric blades and rear transition modules.

Processor blades are available with single, dual or quad Intel® Xeon® CPU’s and also Switch Fabric blades with support for 1, 10 and 40GB.

Our central office 19inch rack mount systems typically comprise of a 12U high chassis with the 8U blades mounted vertically and occupying up to 14 slots wide. Smaller low profile platforms are available for 1 or 2 horizontally mounted blades. These also offer high availability operation of system management, a facility for a Rear Transition Module and cooling.

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AMC

Advanced Mezzanine Card or Advanced MC are field replaceable hot-swap modules to the PICMG specification. These daughter cards add functionality to Advanced TCA® blades and are also plugged into MicroTCA backplanes directly.

AMC’s provide a variety of I/O including user-programmable FPGA, Communications, Analog and Network interfaces on high-speed serial buses like PCI Express and Rapid IO.

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VME

VMEbus continues to be the technology of choice for backplane based real-time computing systems. Following the demise of the VME interface chip several years ago our strategic partners have replaced this functionality, designing in an FPGA device allowing continued availability and support for a large installed base.

We provide a range of VMEbus Single Board Computers (SBC) with Intel®, PowerPC® or QorIQ™ CPU’s. Many of these modules are configured with a variety of onboard interfaces including Gigabit Ethernet, serial ports, and USB as well as a PMC slot to allow additional flexibility for adding application-specific I/O including Analog, Digital, FPGA, Multifunction, Aircraft databus, FPGA and high-speed serial. Additional I/O can also be arranged on VMEbus carrier cards with either Industry Pack or PMC modules fitted.

Depending on the configuration and CPU choice, boards may offer front and rear connections. Likewise, PMC I/O may be accessed from the front or routed via the P2. We can also offer rear transition modules (RTM), termination blocks, and accessories.

VMEbus chassis and systems can be supplied in a standard 19” rack-mount configuration, air-transportable rack (ATR), or customised to meet your unique application requirements.

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PMC-XMC

PCI Mezzanine Cards (PMC) and Switched Mezzanine cards (XMC) conform to the Common Mezzanine Card mechanical specification (CMC).

PMC and XMC cards can be fitted to some single board computers and carriers found in PCI, VMEbus and CompactPCI based systems.

Depending on the I/O arrangement, signals can be routed from the front of the card or through the host carrier to a rear termination DIN rail or chassis mount transition module.

Depending on the application, many modules are available in a standard air-cooled version with rugged conduction-cooled and with conformal coated variants also available.

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ETX

Embedded Technology eXtended modules are a Computer on Module (COM) form factor. Supporting legacy ISA and PCI bus interfaces, they are found in many industrial, transport and medical applications where low power is a key requirement.

This integrated module of 95mm x 125mm in its original form factor was improved to version 3.0 of the ETX specification where the size was reduced to 95mm x 114mm and two SATA ports were added via additional connectors on the top of the module.

Applications requiring faster processing power and additional interfaces such as PCI Express and Gigabit Ethernet have migrated to the COM-Express form factor.

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The Embedded Computing Technology Centre drives advanced solutions, so you can deliver the technologies of tomorrow - today.

Design customer driven systems, build prototypes and manufacture products to meet your distinct needs. Many of the platform-based technologies that we offer were designed with customisation in mind.

Our capabilities help us to offer solutions across all stages of your project. Whether your requirements are standard, modified or highly customised, our experts support and identify your aims and work to ensure that we provide a solution that fits.

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Our approach

When it comes to developing custom solutions for tomorrow's technologies, we trust our approach to deliver the best possible outcome.

Our engineers will skilfully guide you through each stage of your project, working with you to understand and identify a solution that meets your technical and commercial needs before designing and integrating your solution.

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