New Approach to Development of COTS-based Radiation Resilient VME/VPX Boards will Cut Costs, Speed Time to Market
OTTAWA, CANADA – OCTOBER 25 – Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing (CWCEC), a business group of Curtiss-Wright Controls and a leading designer and manufacturer of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) VME, VPX, OpenVPX™ and CompactPCI products for the rugged deployed aerospace and defense market, has announced its new RADHARD Ready™ COTS technology development initiative to apply the principles of embedded COTS product design to military applications that must perform, survive and function following exposure to otherwise damaging gamma and neutron radiation events.
RADHARD Ready COTS products will provide an alternative to today’s costly radiation-hardened products that are designed to meet the most extreme and highest levels of radiation exposure. RADHARD Ready products will address the large percentage of today’s applications that can be satisfactorily addressed instead with a lesser range of radiation tolerance can be through the use of significantly less costly COTS components. CWCEC’s RADHARD Ready initiative will define and drive the development of cost-effective RADHARD Ready COTS boards and subsystems that are tolerant to radiation survive and continue to function
“Curtiss-Wright is leading the embedded military market in bringing the long-proven benefits of COTS product design to the demanding radiation tolerant market,” said Lynn Bamford, vice president and general manager of Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing. “Through sophisticated component selection, testing and evaluation we will enable customers to meet their application requirements faster and with significant savings with radiation resilient RADHARD Ready COTS board solutions.”
Today, many radiation-hardened board products are designed for Space-based deployment and incorporate features and techniques intended to mitigate the most extreme radiation exposure. For a wide range of defense and aerospace applications, this costly, highest level of radiation-hardened design is far beyond what their system requires. RADHARD Ready will offer system integrators with a more cost-effective selection of product options that may better fit their needs.
Recently, CWCEC successfully tested and evaluated radiation mitigation methods on several of its Power Architecture (PowerPC)-based VME boards including the VME-183 6U VME andVME-184 6U VME cards at White Sands Missile Test Range (WSMR) in New Mexico. A RADHARD Ready Test Report is available upon request from the factory.
Reduced Time-to-Market
In addition to lowering development costs, RADHARD Ready can also significantly reduce overall time-to-market through the use of pre-qualified COTS products already analyzed or tested for radiation tolerance development.
RADHARD Ready Services:
· Component selection
· Component testing
· Component evaluation
· Bill of Materials (BOM) analysis.
· Configuration management and life cycle services
Modified COTS RADHARD Ready
For those applications that demand levels of radiation mitigation that cannot be resolved through COTS component selection, CWCEC offers a full range of customization services (hardware, software, FPGA and testing) that can be used to create unique solutions based on the customer’s specific requirements.
For editorial information regarding Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing products or services, contact John Wranovics, public relations director, Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, Tel: (925) 640-6402; email. [email protected].
Inquiries: Please forward all Sales and reader service inquiries to Jerri-Lynne Charbonneau, Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing, Tel: (613) 254-5112; Fax: (613) 599-7777; e-mail: [email protected].
About Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing
Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing is the industry’s most comprehensive and experienced single source for embedded solutions, ranging from Processing, Subsystems, Data Communication, DSP, and Video & Graphics to the most advanced board level components and fully integrated custom systems. The Embedded Computing group serves the defense, aerospace, commercial and industrial markets and is part of Curtiss-Wright Controls Inc.
About Curtiss-Wright Controls, Inc.
Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Curtiss-Wright Controls is the motion control segment of Curtiss-Wright Corporation (NYSE: CW). With manufacturing facilities around the world, Curtiss-Wright Controls is a leading technology-based organization providing niche motion control products, subsystems and services internationally for the aerospace and defense markets. For more information, visit www.cwcontrols.com/.