Staying flawlessly on message, Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing continues its VPX market onslaught with its new VPX6-1952 VPX SBC, this time with Intel’s T9400 Core 2 Duo CPU. Says CWCEC, the board is used in the Integrated Computer System (ICS) of the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS) program. Intel’s Penryn CPU is part of the 45 nm mobile processor family, is on the company’s seven-year availability plan, and boasts a maximum TDP of 35 W running at about 1.0 VDC. On CWCEC’s SBC, the unit screams along at 2.5 GHz, has a 6 MB cache, and a 1,066 MHz FSB (versus a “mere” 667 MHz on previous versions).
The ever-important chipset is Intel’s GM45, which supports up to 8 GB of memory on this 6U VPX board. Elsewhere there are dual GbE ports, 3 serial ports, an astounding 10 USB ports, and even an XMC site with 20 differential and 2 single-ended backplane-mapped pairs. Though VPX is designed as a platform for myriad gigabit backplane I/O, many C4ISR applications still run on civilian-style x86 processors, with COTS peripherals such as printers, biometric scanners, and flash drives. The VPX6-1952 balances embedded desktop capabilities with custom mezzanine I/O in VPX-equipped chassis.