At North Atlantic Industries (NAI), we take pride in our active participation in several standards organizations and technical working groups. One such group is the VITA (VME International Trade Association) that developed the VITA 46 (VPX) standard. NAI customers can rest assured that we are committed to staying up to date with the latest industry developments and standards to provide you with the most advanced and reliable products.
Check out our VPX Power Supply Guide for guidance pertaining to power supply implementation and solutions for designers within the VITA VPX ecosystem.
NAI is dedicated to meeting the growing embedded computing bandwidth requirements of critical applications that demand the collection, analysis, and display of large amounts of data. The VPX standard, which we proudly adhere to, enables us and other organizations to achieve this goal while balancing the environmental considerations of size, weight and power (SWaP).
VPX standards retain the compact 3U and 6U formats of VME, but also establish a new direction for ruggedized embedded computing solutions. It expands the possible bandwidth, compared to traditional VME systems, by replacing the parallel bus with high-speed, highly reliable serial buses. Furthermore, it merges the latest connector and packaging technology with the latest bus and serial switch fabric technology.
The VPX standard is designed to work seamlessly with any high-speed serial bus, including PCIe, Gigabit Ethernet, and others. As a result, these serial buses offer significantly higher data rates while using only a fraction of the routing resources, making them a more efficient and effective solution for your critical applications.
NAI strives to keep our customers informed about the technical specifications of the products we design and manufacture. When it comes to VPX technology, it's important to understand the different ANSI/VITA standards that apply to it. VPX is a general term that encompasses three main standards, along with their relevant sub-standards, including:
At North Atlantic Industries, we specialize in designing and manufacturing a variety of high-density, low-power 3U and 6U products that are built to meet VPX (VITA 46) standards. Additionally, our VPX Power Supplies are designed to meet VITA 46.11 for System Management, ensuring that your systems are equipped with the latest technology to meet your needs. If you have any questions about our products or the VPX standards, our knowledgeable team is always here to help.
At NAI, we understand that our customers in the defense and aerospace industries require rugged and reliable hardware that can withstand harsh environments. That's why we adhere to the ANSI/VITA 47 standard, which sets strict environmental, design, construction, and quality requirements for commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware intended for use in these industries.
The VITA 47 standard covers a range of factors that are essential to ensuring the reliability and durability of our products, including:
NAI is committed to designing and manufacturing products that meet or exceed these rigorous standards. If you're looking for hardware that can withstand even the harshest environments, we invite you to view our ruggedization capabilities and environmental specifications design guidelines. The following NAI products are designed to comply with VITA 47.
At NAI, we understand that the high-density boards required for high-speed I/O demand more power, making advanced cooling methods essential for rugged VPX designs. That's why we adhere to the VPX Ruggedized Enhanced Design Implementation Mechanical Base Specification (VPX REDI) within the VITA 48 standard. This specification defines general mechanical design requirements for forced-air cooling, conduction cooling, and liquid flow-through and spray-cooling applications.
The purpose of this standard is to improve the thermal and structural characteristics of packaging modules while also incorporating provisions for two-level maintenance. In simple terms, it defines the mechanical interface between the chassis and modules to ensure reliable performance even in the harshest environments.
At NAI, we design all VPX/OpenVPX products to be compatible with the VPX-REDI standard and all applicable sub-paragraphs of ANSI/VITA 48.0. Our metalwork is carefully crafted to withstand even the toughest conditions, providing our customers with the peace of mind they need to focus on their critical applications.
NAI power products support the needs of the critical-systems embedded community by building them in compliance with the VITA 62 standard. This standard leverages the efforts within the VITA 46, VITA 47, VITA 48, and VITA 65 standards and provides design guidelines for manufacturers to follow, ensuring that their products can be plugged into VITA 62-compatible backplanes.
VITA 62 is built to promote interoperability, configuration flexibility, advanced levels of reliability, and sophisticated systems management. It uses the standard VPX 3U/6U form factor and complies with the requirements defined in VITA 48.0. The standard includes details such as connector configuration, power supply input and output requirements, pin-outs, and mechanical configurations. Additionally, VITA 62 has utility functionality that includes N+1 failover, VBAT, and 50ms holdup. Furthermore, the standard provides guidelines for adherence to MIL-STD-461F (electromagnetic interference), MIL-STD-704F (electrical standards and holdup time), and MIL-STD-810F (ruggedization).
NAI’s rugged power supplies meet all VITA 62 requirements, ensuring the highest level of quality and performance.
OpenVPX, also known as VITA 65, was developed as a system-level implementation within the VPX specification to ensure product interoperability in developing systems and subsystems. By considering a system-level view of performance and interoperability, OpenVPX allows for the design and implementation of high-speed, high-power switched fabric-based systems while reducing the need for custom development of backplanes and chassis for every application. This reduces development time and risk for system integrators who use VPX boards in their systems.
The OpenVPX specification defines a set of profiles that enable the interoperability of products used in developing high-speed, high-power switched fabric-based systems.
Slot profile: This is a physical mapping of ports onto a given slot's backplane connectors.
Module profile: This profile maps the physical ports onto a module's backplane connectors, along with information on the type and size of plug-in modules, pipes available, and protocols associated with those pipes.
Backplane profile: This profile describes the number and type of slots implemented, the standards supported, and the topology used for connecting the boards, including centralized and distributed switching and host/slave configurations. It also includes information on the channels and buses that interconnect slots and other physical entities in a backplane.
Chassis profile: This profile provides a physical definition of a development chassis implementation that includes chassis type, slot count, primary power input, module cooling type, backplane profile, and supplied backplane power.
NAI's OpenVPX Boards are specifically designed to meet the exacting requirements of VITA 65. In addition, all NAI Rugged VPX Power Supplies are designed as an off-the-shelf solution for VITA 46.0 and VITA 65 systems. They are fully compatible with VPX specifications, support all VITA standard I/O, signals, and features, and comply with the VITA 62 mechanical and electrical requirements for modular power supplies.
If you need additional information or assistance, NAI is here to help. You can contact us for sales or technical support between the hours of 9am-5pm Eastern (UTC-5) at +1 (631) 567-1100 or by submitting our Contact Us Form. We aim to respond to all inquiries within one business day.