PRODUCT OF THE WEEK: Abaco Systems SOSA aligned, rugged 3U VPX single-board computer

This week’s product, the Abaco Systems’ SOSA aligned rugged 3U VPX SBC3511 single-board computer (SBC), brings users variability by aligning with defense standards while improving lifecycle and supportability, lowering the total cost of ownership, and reducing risk. The SBC3511’s alignment with the SOSA standard, its leading-edge performance, its innovative thermal management, and its monitoring/reporting functionality make it ideal for mission-critical signal-processing applications.

The SBC3511 is based around the highly integrated Intel Xeon E-2276ME 6-core/12-thread processor ('Coffee Lake Refresh') which operates at 2.8 GHz with TurboBoost up to 4.5 GHz, and is supported by a Xilinx Ultrascale+ FPGA which acts as the board’s security hub, capable of hosting Abaco, third party, or customer IP.

The single board computer was originally announced with support for 32 GBytes of DDR4 RAM and 80 GBytes of NVMe SSD. This has now been extended to 64 GBytes of DDR4 RAM and 256 GBytes of NVMe SSD, providing increased platform performance and throughput. In addition, the SBC3511’s IPMI subsystem has been upgraded to enable operation from 3.3V AUX power only, further enhancing its alignment with the SOSA standard.

It features a 40 Gigabit Ethernet data plane, delivering not only a high-speed interconnect but also compatibility with an OpenVPX payload profile, to which SOSA, CMOSS and HOST are all aligned. In addition, the SBC3511’s IPMI subsystem has been upgraded to allow operation from 3.3V AUX power only, further enhancing its alignment with the SOSA standard.

Software Suite

The SBC3511 can also be supported with one or more elements of the Abaco software suite, including PBIT for early monitoring and reporting; CIBIT for non-intrusive ongoing and on-demand monitoring and reporting; and Health Toolkit, which acts as a system monitor to collect and report the health of all elements in the system, thanks to the VITA46.11 tier 1 and tier 2 interface over IPMI. All are fully compatible with the most frequently deployed operating systems and applications for defense and industry.

Security Features

The SBC3511 uses a range of security features that include an inherently secure FPGA solution (Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+), and support for Intel’s Trusted Execution Technology. The FPGA can be utilized to instantiate a range of Abaco defined security features. Customers who wish to embed their own application specific features, can also be supported.

Thermal Management

For thermal management the features a unique design, which enables deterministic high performance even at the extended temperatures typical of deployment on space-constrained platforms in combat zones. This contrasts less efficient thermal management designs that see a processor’s performance throttled back at high temperatures.

For more information, visit the SBC3511 page here, or visit the company’s website, or follow the links below.

Resources:
•   To view the SBC3511 data sheet, click here.
•   For SOSA Executive Summary, click here.
•   For sales information, click here.