As Intel’s Core family of CPUs takes the civilian world by storm, the military is closer behind than ever before. Gone are the days of waiting two or more years for the rugged, embedded version. Take Aitech’s C870 (SBC) and CM870 (PMC/XMC carrier) boards, for instance. These single-slot, 3U VPX boards pack more into two 3U boards than was previously available from two 6U boards. The SBC is equipped with Intel’s Nehalem-based Core i7 dual-core CPU running at 2.53 GHz for performance, all the way down to 1.33 GHz for “ultra-low power.” Since Aitech knows rugged (sounds like a slogan, doesn’t it?), the 4 GB of DDR3 SDRAM with ECC is soldered to the board. There’s also 4 MB of flash BIOS and 8 GB of SSD storage.
I/O on the C870 CPU includes 2 1000BASE-T Ethernet and 2 1000-BASE-BX/KX (backplane Ethernet), 2 SATA II ports, 4 USB 2.0, and 8 discrete I/O. There’s also an Intel graphics controller onboard, so HDMI/DVI and CRI outputs are also present. Operating systems include Windows XP and Embedded, plus Linux and VxWorks. The CM870 carrier card is designed for PMC and XMC boards and supports PCIe x4, 64-bit 66/133 PCI-X, and plain old PCI. For XMC boards, there’s PCIe x8. All of this routing is compliant with VITA 46.3, 46.4, and 46.9 for various VPX configurations. And as we said earlier, since Aitech knows rugged, both boards are available in air- and conduction-cooled flavors. Amazingly, both cards weigh less than 0.7 pounds each in conduction-cooled armor.
