VPX is the first of the VITA backplane standards to support industry standard backplane optical I/O. Previously, optical I/O was limited to front panel implementations. And Elma is the first to bring this technology to you.
Elma’s 3U VPX backplane supports 3U VPX cards with backplane optical I/O. Since VPX channel performance will likely be limited to between 10 and 14 GBaud, this optical backplane can support 12 bi-directional channels of 28 Gbps. Slots 2 and 3 are fitted with VITA 66.4 optical connectors in place of J2 wafers 9-16. The new VITA connector enables industry standard MT (MPO) terminated optical cable assemblies to blind mate with similar optical ferrules on the daughter card.
The optical interconnect can be used to carry data plane signals from slot to slot or to sensor arrays or other external equipment. With 64 fiber optical ferrules expected in Q4-2014 the amount of connectivity that can be supported by this backplane is far beyond any other standard backplane architecture.
