With inputs from key clients, Pretoria-based electronics company Etion Create, part of the Reunert Group, has now upgraded its VF360 3U OpenVPX Single-Board Computer module.
Designated the VF365, this module leverages on Intel Arria 10 SoC FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) and Texas Instruments KeyStone Multicore DSP (Digital Signal Processor) technology, Etion Create said in a release.
“The VF365 is essentially a midlife upgrade, serving as a drop-in replacement for the trusted VF360 module, offering more performance with lower power consumption at a lower cost,” explained Etion Create Product Manager Piet du Toit. “It is an ultra-high bandwidth processing platform, ideally suited for computation and bandwidth intensive applications such as radar, signals intelligence (SIGINT), electronic warfare (EW), software defined radio (SDR), networking and video.”
Du Toit pointed out that the Arria 10 SoC high-performance FPGA fabric provides abundant logic, internal memory and floating-point DSP resources for demanding applications in the defence, industrial and energy markets.
The combination of the Multicore Floating-Point DSP processor and the FPGA’s hard processor system (HPS) with dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor provides flexible software options for both control and high-performance processing type applications, tightly coupled to the FPGA through Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe), Serial RapidIO (SRIO) and high-bandwidth Advanced eXtensible Interface (AXI) bridges.
When populated with Etion Create (or 3rd party) FPGA Mezzanine Cards (FMC), the VF365 provides a platform with an abundance of high bandwidth input/output (I/O) options in different application fields through the industry standard VITA 57 connector, Etion Create said.
The new module that is likely to interest international military customers is an embedded board used in defence electronics systems and subsystems, such as radar to generate, receive and process complex radar signals and EW to intercept and control the jamming of signals in the spectrum.
“Etion Create has a solid track record as a trusted supplier of innovative electronic technology for more than 20 years, which counts in our favour when bringing new products to market,” du Toit affirmed.
In May this year the company reported that another of its embedded products, the VF370, was selected for Saab’s new IDAS-310 integrated defensive aids suite fitted to several aircraft and helicopter types in more than 15 countries. It protects these aircraft against radar-guided missiles and anti-aircraft fire.
