Taking a closer look.

As an equipment manufacturer designs and develops a new piece of kit for today's warfighter, the world of embedded electronics and components, along with the ways to keep them cool, is often an afterthought, or just barely afforded a sideways glance. But as the recent Meecc conference in Long Beach, California proved, industry is beginning to focus critical attention on the busses and boards that give life to today's electronic and computer-based equipment.

The first of its kind, the Military Embedded Electronics and Computers Conference (Meecc) in Long Beach, California, brought this sector's manufacturers and developers together with their customers in open-door discussions and presentations, which allowed both sides to discover new innovations and voice opinions.

Embedded computing is the sector of industry that covers both the 'printed circuit boards' and connections to the databus that carries information to other sensors or controls within a piece of gear. Whether it be a radar on a ground-based or airborne platform, a turret drive control, a torpedo's guidance system or a UAV ground control station display, electronic systems require some sort of interface between sensor and soldier. This is the kingdom of embedded electronics.

In the Continuum

First out of the gate was Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing (CWCEC), who took advantage on the afternoon of the day before the show opening to announce its new unifying product-line architecture--Cots Continuum--which supports the migration between product generations and board standards. The new family of Single Board Computers (SBC) and multi-computing engines (in both DSP and FPGA platforms) to be released under the 'Continuum umbrella' will be based on the new Vita 46 standard.

Along with the architecture announcement CWCEC introduced its SVMX/DVMX-185, which is a single-board computer based on the new Vita 46 switched serial fabric standard and is the industry's first Vita 46 product. The card will feature up to two Vita 42.3 XMC modules that will provide support for both PCI Express connectivity to the XMC and high-speed I/O from the XMC to the backplane (where the actual connectors live).

CWCEC was formed but two years ago through the acquisitions of six leaders in the embedded computing marketplace, Vista Controls, Peritek, Systran, Synergy Microsystems and Prima Graphics. Therefore, whilst being a newcomer on the block in name, CWCEC enjoys a surprising large amount of experience tenure and market share.

And Cots Means...?

Military programmes have requirements that include operation in or produce environments that exceed the capabilities of most commercial products. Yet, despite this fact many government contracts specify the use of commercial off-the-shelf (Cots) components to minimise costs and development time. These facts are widely known.

Yet most speakers at the Meecc conference preached "Customised Off-The-Shelf" solutions, as ruggedness and high-quality cooling solutions are not inherent in most commercial-built products, and most customers provide their own levels of customisation. It is this scenario that has provided the impetus to most Cots suppliers to become more flexible in meeting the demands of both military and commercial customers.

A prime example was illustrated in Aitech's announcement of its contract win from General Dynamics Canada covering initial pre-production units of the Stryker Mobile Gun Computer (MGS) subsystem for use in the US Army's Interim Armored Vehicle. The electronic controller subsystem enclosures from Aitech consist of both off-the-shelf and customised chassis solutions, as well as the backplane, power supply and enclosure products.

Another announcement was from Thales Computers, who introduced a new storage feature to its PowerNode3 Computing Node by way of an Ultra Wide SCSI PMC. The SCSI PMC provides a throughput of up to 40 MB/sec and increased connectivity for the dual one GHz PowerNode3--a combination that allows the bundle to act as a stand-alone, high-end Single-Board Computer.

On the Floor

The Meecc conference brought together a plethora of leaders in the embedded computing industry including, for example, Radstone and Pentek. Many companies had new products on display. Sky Computers introduced the new Smartpac additions to its 'Smart Systems' embedded architecture family, which is based on the InfiniBand fabric, and announced its selection by Lockheed Martin for the US Navy's Tactical Environment Processor programme.

Tekmicro and QinetiQ had, in January 2005, formed an alliance for the development and distribution of level 1 (or higher) embedded system products--the newest development from that symbiosis is a high-performance, FPGA-based communications management and processing platform, the Quixilica Callisto VXS-1. The card provides twelve SFP receptacles on the front panel. Custom solutions allow up to five flexibly reconfigured FPGAs onboard with as many as five banks of DDS SDRam providing 128 MB per FPGA. Key applications for the Callisto VXS-1 include electronic warfare, radar, software radios and telecommunications.

That's Cool!

One breakaway series of meetings during the show was dedicated to CoolCon (Cooling Conference), which addressed the solutions available for turning down the heat that these high-end processors generate.

One such solution, provided by Isothermal Systems Research (ISR), is the Spray-cool system. According to ISR the technology works by the addition of Spraymodules, which are but one part of a larger system used to cool electronics through evaporation. Spraymodules are heat sink replacement units that sit on the processor. Inside the Spraymodule a non-conductive, non-corrosive liquid coolant is atomised and then sprayed onto the processor. The coolant immediately evaporates, taking away with it some of the heat. The vapour is then pumped to a heat exchanger or thermal management unit, which rejects the heat remotely, thereby providing an extremely efficient method of thermal management.

The Spraycool technology was first used in the defence industry on the US Marine Corps' Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle to provide temperature control for the Pentium and Sun Sparc processors that power the vehicle's command and control systems and were cooling specific portions of the vetronics suite.

As the defence industry manufacturers continue to direct more of their attention to the sub-system sector of computing and electronics the seating arrangements at the decision tables will begin to shift.

During a new product announcement a Thales Computing representative put forth: <<This show is a group of people trying to work together. We don't want to compete with our customers, we're here to build partnerships with large industry end-users>>.

Using Cots electronics has for many years allowed the system integrator to acquire hardware and software from the commercial market. Today's 'customised' off-the-shelf solutions provide that same integrator with a wider-range of methods and the opportunity to focus more on the core task--designing and integrating the building blocks of the complete defence system.

Discussing the Component Trade

DSP            Digital Signal Processing
FPGA           Field-Programmable Gate Arrays
I/O            Input/Output
PCI            Peripheral Component Interconnect (a local
               64-bit bus standard)
PCI Express    an I/O interconnect bus standard that doubles
               the data transfer rates of original PCI
PMC            PCI Mezzanine Card
PowerPC        Processor chip built by Motorola used in
               almost all high-speed, processor-intensive
               applications--originally designed for the
               Macintosh computer
VME            Versa Module European (a connection
               standard)
Vita           VME International Trade Organisation