Rugged computers take-on the shock and the heat

Rugged computers take-on the shock and the heat

Designers of rugged embedded computer systems balance the need to work in harsh conditions with laptop computers and tablet computers. while meeting the growing demand for open system standards.
Warfighters hope to use this technology in reactive applications and other hazardous environments. Fortunately, because of how powerful they are, today’s computers designed for the modern battlefield provide them and professionals with incredible computing power in harsh environments.
For many years, a group of defense technology business professionals have been working to adopt an open systems industry standard known as Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA). The organization aims to take advantage of existing and emerging open standards. Ultimately, Sosa’s goal is to make the technology affordable and adaptable.

A San Francisco-based consortium called Open Group has released the SOSA 1.0 standard by 2021. This open architecture is a major driver of the industry trend towards developing deployable rugged computing systems.

Justin Moll, vice president of sales and marketing at Pixus Technologies Inc. in Waterloo, Ontario, notes that Sosa’s work gained attention as engineers developed components for defense systems.

“One of the key questions in shielded embedded computing systems is whether SOSA compliance is required for the chassis platform as this has a significant impact on I/O configuration and thermal management,” Moll said. fiber and optic interface backplane speed”, chassis handling, etc. If the project SOSA is incompatible. There will be a wide range of performance metrics from low end systems to high performance systems without collapsing into individual profiles.”

Open Group says its technology can actually be tested with systems designed with SOSA in mind. To ensure that the criteria are met, SOSA is working on a compatibility testing framework to automate the process. And when the first exam begins, perhaps in early February 2023, it will be a manual process.

Pixus has released a compatible chassis manager for the SHM300 slotsaver VPX Vita 46.11 that allows embedded computer designers to manage their chassis without sacrificing any slots.

The SHM300 is designed to the latest SOSA specifications and uses all software and firmware from the U.S. Chassis Manager Monitors and manages field replaceable units plugged into the SOSA/OpenVPX chassis.

Features include a plug-in board for chassis detection. Storage thermal management SDR-based sensor initialization and other chassis control and event handling

The compact design of the Pixus Sosa Aligned Chassis Manager ensures that size and spacing will not interfere with the Vita 66 or 67 interface and line.The SHM300 also supports redundant options.

Bringing the heat

According to Pixus Mall, Sosa compatibility adds a small problem to the problem keeping engineers up at night: How do you keep this technology cool?
“Thermal management has been a challenge for embedded enclosure systems for decades, but there are significant differences between the latest generation of SOSA-tuned systems and most OpenVPX-based systems,” said Moll. “In some cases, traditional cooling methods are not enough. With airflow, the air goes directly through the plug-in cards, while with the Vita 48.8, the air flows through the fins of the board openings. .” Burn and burn. Liquid cooling in many applications.” Efforts have been made to avoid cost/complexity, but also to raise awareness of the procedure.”
Anish Kothari, Texas-based Systel Inc.; , Sugar Land’s vice president of marketing, agrees that thermal management is something that needs a lot of attention in developing countries.
“A senior US military leader said burnout is the biggest challenge we face on the combat side,” he said. We found our approach to system design and testing in Systems Sound; “The most important thing for forward-deployed hardware is to meet the huge demand for high-performance electronics,” said Kothari.
“We integrate high-wattage commercial electronics into our edge server-class systems, generating up to 300 watts from a single GPU, with a total system wattage of 1,000 watts,” said Kothari. “Reliable removal of that volume in sealed systems exposed to high operating temperatures – especially extreme applications up to 55°C and 75°C – is critical in any system board we design for the worst conditions.” Nothing about customer supplied cooling plates. . . . . And… available airflow.” Without thinking
Kothari concluded, “On average, the next generation of CPUs, GPUs, NICs, FPGAs, and other electronics will generate more heat than the current generation, which is a major challenge. Thermal management is an important decision variable and a major challenge.” of program risk if not properly designed and tested.”

Piece of Pi

Last year marked the tenth anniversary of the Raspberry Pi miniature single card computer. “RPI” had its origins in computer education
The rugged TOUGHBOOK 40 laptop offers advanced docking support and quad pass-through connections. In addition, it offers 4×4 MIMO, high-speed USB and Ethernet ports, and software-selectable pass-through for each antenna.
The rugged TOUGHBOOK 40 laptop offers advanced docking support and quad pass-through connections. In addition, it offers 4×4 MIMO, high-speed USB and Ethernet ports, and software-selectable pass-through for each antenna.
Ideas, but few
The inexpensive, modular, open computer card has gained immense popularity beyond its original audience due to its accessibility and development-friendly design including standard USB and HDMI ports.
Last year, Curtis-Wright Defense Solutions in Ashburn, Virginia, introduced the Raspberry Pi to the world of high-performance computing for aerospace and military applications.
David Jedinak, General Manager, Parvus Business Unit, Curtiss-Wright Corp. The Defense Solutions segment defines the company’s Duracore Pi Raspberry Pi Mission Computer as a high-performance, ultra-small form factor, affordable computer board that gets the job done.
“All the military, strict rules — it all works,” Curtis-Wright’s Jedinak said. Duracore PI was tested for qualification against the requirements of MIL-STD-810, MIL-STD-461, MIL-STD-1275, MIL-STD-704, and RTCA/DO-160 for environmental, energy, and EMI compliance is.
the Raspberry Pi-powered Mission Computer small enough to fit in the palm of your hand; It’s half the weight and measures 1.2 by 2.49 by 3.34 inches. This is stacked to improve functionality and performance through an expandable ring system design that allows system designers to configure a mix of hardware mounted on the DuraCOR Pi mission computer and additional modules.
The DuraCOR Pi features a miniature Parvus DuraNet 20-11 network switch that provides Level-2+ carrier-grade Ethernet software management and support for the IEEE-1588v2 precision timing protocol.
The DuraCOR Pi NSA STIGd can run Pi operating systems such as Raspian Linux, VxWorks, Windows and IoT Core, as well as Pi toolsets and programming frameworks such as Python, Java, C and C++.
“It’s clear that safety comes first,” Jedinak said of the Duracore Pi. “One of these things is – there are a lot of companies that offer locked down versions of Linux on the Raspberry Pi. One of our goals with all of this is to make sure that there’s a standard Raspberry Pi ecosystem, all the software,.” Have everything.” Something like that. stuff.And it’s 100 percent readable.
“We’re not trying to do anything special with it,” Jedinak adds. “The advantage really is that you can get a commercial Raspberry Pi. It’s pre-made and you can use it. You buy it online or in a big store and you get it, you get it from scratch.” you’re developing.” can do the job. , then you can get it.” “Damn, you can take it without much change. And so you can harness the full power of an ecosystem that is already working to reinforce the Raspberry Pi operating system with other software.”