By Richard Wilson 10th May 2013
Emerson Network Power says it will now continue selling two of its VMEbus processor boards until 2017. deif iom4 2
Originally introduced as long ago as 1999, the MVME5100 board will now have a lifecycle of at least 18 years, in an industry where embedded board manufacturers routinely support their products for seven years in production.
Seeing continuing demand for the VMEbus boards, Emerson carried the necessary component location and testing programme to secure the supply of critical components that were at risk of obsolescence.
The MVME5100 and MVME5110 variant VME processor boards from Emerson incorporate G4 Power Architecture processors from Freescale Semiconductor and are used in industrial automation, military, medical imaging and other applications. Through its acquisition history of companies such as Motorola Computer Group, Force Computers and Artesyn, Emerson Network Power has shipped over two million VME processor boards, giving it one of the largest installed bases in the industry.
“VME will remain the primary architecture in many event-driven embedded platforms for many years to come,” said Hilo Oltman, director of product line marketing for the Embedded Computing business of Emerson Network Power.
The VME embedded computing bus standard was created back in the 1970s for the Motorola 68000 series of microprocessor-based systems.
Back then is was a 16-bit bus, which would fit within the existing Eurocard DIN connectors.
The current VME64 includes a 64-bit bus in 6U-sized cards and 32-bit in 3U cards. The VME64 protocol will support 40MB/s data throughput.
“There are just a handful of vendors with the design and manufacturing infrastructure required to produce embedded boards with such long availability,” said Oltman.
“This announcement underlines our commitment to providing long-term production and revision management capability that gives customers confidence in selecting these products.”
Last year Emerson announced a VME/VXS single-board computer built around Freescale’s P5020 QorIQ processor, up to 8Gbyte of DDR3-1333MHz ECC, and 8Gbyte eMMC NAND flash.
Called MVME8100, it also has 512kbyte of non-volatile FRAM for critical data storage, data logs, dynamic program updates, and dynamic security.
“MVME8100 will provide technology insertion to prolong current programs while providing significantly more computing performance and data throughput,” said Emerson marketing director Paul Virgo. “Backwards compatibility has been a foundation for the success of VME technology.”
Applications are expected in high-end industrial control such as semiconductor processing equipment and photo lithography, as well as military applications such as C4ISR, including radar/sonar.
Rugged variants are available with extended shock, vibration, temperature and conduction cooling.
“Extended temperature variants feature an operating temperature range of -40 up to 85°C,” said the firm. “Rugged models are capable of operating with up to 10gravity of vibration from 15Hz to 2kHz, and can withstand an 11ms shock of up to 40G. Conformal coating is also available as an option.”
I/O includes PCIe and SRIO fabric connectivity and multiple USB, serial and Ethernet ports.
Supported operating systems include Linux, Wind River VxWorks, and Green Hills Integrity. www.EmersonNetworkPower.com
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