Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solutions division recently announced that it will support the breakthrough ‘Gen 5’ VPX (VITA 46) data rates on its next generation of rugged commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) embedded modules and systems.

VPX, an open standard, defines the preferred open architecture for designing and integrating rugged embedded electronics systems for deployed aerospace and defence applications. The unprecedented 25 Gbaud VPX interconnect speed required for 100Gb Ethernet is made possible through the combination of Curtiss-Wright’s advanced high speed design rules and interconnects, such as the new MULTIGIG RT 3 connectors recently announced by TE. These new interconnects will be proposed as extensions to VITA standards in 2018 and enable significant gains in bandwidth and functionality for tomorrow’s embedded computing systems.

The new next-generation VPX connector is intermateable with the earlier MultiGig RT2 connectors. In January 2017, Curtiss-Wright was the first COTS vendor to announce support for 16 Gbaud ‘Gen 4’ PCIe using standard MultiGig RT2 connectors.

This previous milestone resulted from Curtiss-Wright’s optimised design approach and extended the ability of the VPX and OpenVPX™ (VITA 65) standards to support the full bandwidth and signal integrity required when transferring 16 Gbaud PCIe 4.0 data communications signals over the backplane. This design approach provided the technology path to support Gen 5 VPX speeds. Curtiss-Wright worked closely with TE on modelling the Gen 5 VPX design rules with connectors like the MULTIGIG RT 3, which it plans to use on its new Fabric100™ family of modules and systems scheduled for introduction in 2019.

“Curtiss-Wright continues to lead the embedded COTS electronics industry with VPX and OpenVPX™ signal integrity capabilities that take embedded system performance to ever higher speeds,” said Lynn Bamford, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Defense Solutions division.

“The combination of Curtiss-Wright’s advanced high-speed design rules and connectors like the new MULTIGIG RT 3 connector, implemented on our Fabric100 modules and systems, will deliver a whole new class of performance for critical deployed systems.”

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For more information about Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solutions division, please visit www.curtisswrightds.com.