The VITA Standards Organization (VSO) has a process in its policies and procedures for “VITA Draft Standard for Trial Use.” These are proposed standards that are intended for subsequent submittal for recognition by VITA and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) that are first published as a “VITA Draft Standard for Trial Use.” Occasionally, a working group will elect to pursue the Trial Use path for a standard that needs additional exposure while work continues on the final specification. The standard is solid enough to use to design products, but additional real-world feedback is important before ratifying the specification.
The working group responsible for the proposed draft standard may set the period for Trial Use to any period up to 36 months. A draft standard for Trial Use may only be issued once for any proposed standard.
VITA 75 in Trial Use
The VITA 75 standard went to Trial Use status in 2012. The purpose of releasing this draft standard for Trial Use was to give manufacturers and users the opportunity to design, build, and use products, and to provide valuable feedback to the standard developers based on actual use. This feedback will be used to make improvements as appropriate to the final draft standard with the intent of maintaining compatibility to the extent possible with existing products.
VITA 75 is a “voice of the customer” driven program. The scope of the VITA 75 project is broken down into modular subsystems, referred to as “dot” specifications, that define the complete platform. Four dot specifications related to VITA 75 were approved for a 36-month Trial Use period beginning in July of 2012. Released to Trial Use were:
- VITA 75.0 Base Profile РDefines external dimensions and envelope the subsystem must fit within; the size is scalable
- VITA 75.11 Front Panel Profile РDefines the power and signal interfaces that connect externally to the subsystem
- VITA 75.20 Free Convection Cooling РDefines free convection cooling methods and the interface for cooling the subsystem
- VITA 75.20 Conduct to Cold Plate Cooling РDefines conduction cooling methods and the interface for cooling the subsystem
By far, the majority of the effort to date has been in defining the basic “box” profile in VITA 75.0 (Figure 1) and the front panel I/O profile in VITA 75.11. The architects have done an outstanding job of defining the external dimensions while making the size of the envelope scalable to accommodate the widest range of applications reasonable.
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The efforts in defining the front panel connections reflects the importance of the system aspects of VITA 75. Great care has been taken to address the needs of customers as they develop platforms for rugged environments using VITA 75. Front panel connector locations and types have been defined for the various scalable box sizes defined within VITA 75.0.
Next steps for VITA 75
Trial Use status is not the end of the work effort for VITA 75 Рquite the contrary; there is still much to be done as the other supporting specifications near completion. The good news so far is that no comments for changes, improvements, or clarification to the VITA 75 specifications in Trial Use status have been received by the specification editor.
I have yet to see or hear of any announcement of products based on VITA 75. I do know that VITA 75 addresses many key embedded computing requirements for the Open Systems Approach for Computing Platforms driven by the Department of Defense and many key programs, so I know the need and demand is there. Sequestration has slowed down some of the efforts as supporters have had to adjust spending priorities, but the excitement from the working group is high and I expect to see noticeable progress in the coming months.
The VITA 75 specifications are available for purchase on the VITA website at www.vita.com.