Currently 12 different specification documents are being developed by the VITA Standards Organization. Bustronic has already demonstrated the industry's first VXS backplane. The multitude of VSO specifications under development are designed to provide high speed fabric support in the P0 area of a backplane that continues to support VME64x transactions. Several vendors are expected to release VXS switch and node cards within the next couple of months.

PICMG is also currently developing a large number of new specification documents. Some are subsidiary specifications to the existing AdvancedTCA documents. However, others include a passive PCIexpress backplane, 3U Eurocard CompactPCIxpress, CompactTCA which offers fabric support similar to AdvancedTCA but at a reduced bandwidth in a 6U "CompactPCI compatible" form factor. Other developments include a new mezzanine card specification that will be used in AdvancedTCA as well as VITA's VXS environment. Bustronic demonstrated a new high speed test fixture in June at an Advanced Interoperability Workshop (AIW) hosted by Lucent.

Standards Documents Available:
With so many new standards being developed, it can be a challenge to know keep track of them all. A 9 page document is available from Bustronic that tracks over 150 emerging and existing standards of interest to the embedded computer industry. This document includes a selection of standards from the VSO, PICMG, IEEE, IEC, IPC, PCI SIG, EIA, ARINC and others with their title or a brief description and the URL of the sponsoring standards organization. For the emerging documents that are still under revision, this reference document also indicates the current revision level, and a key contact such as the draft editor or committee chair. This document will continue to be revised to provide updated revision status and to include additional standards of interest to our customers.