BUSTRONIC ANNOUNCES A SWITCHLESS VXS BACKPLANE FOR EARLY DEVELOPMENT

FREMONT, California, Nov. 12, 2004 - Bustronic Corporation, an industry leading designer and manufacturer of high-performance backplanes, has announced a new development VXS Switched Serial Backplane.

Compliant to the new VITA 41.0 specification, the 5-slot VXS solution does not require a switch card to run the fabric. The 5-slot switchless VXS backplane allows the direct connection of up to 3 node cards without the requirement for a switch card. This unique arrangement could be used to develop and test communication between end-point cards, support small system needs and allow the demonstration of VXS node cards prior to the availability of switch silicon. As a VXS switch card is inherently compliant with a particular data transport protocol, this backplane can be used to test multiple data transport protocol end-point designs without the need to invest in multiple switch card types. Because Serial Rapid IO silicon is not expected until later in 2005 this is a good solution to allow the market to move ahead today. Many of the proposed uses of the VXS fabric would only consist of two or three cards and for these applications this unique switchless VXS solution is an ideal fit.

Bustronic's VXS backplanes are compliant to the VITA 38 specification for System Management. The 7U height of the backplane allows room for plenty of power taps for 3.3V, 5V, +/- 12V, and GND.

The 5-slot VXS Switchless Backplane was developed in conjunction with Pentek's Model 6821 board. The first in a series of VXS products, the Model 6821 a single-channel, 6U VMEbus board featuring one of the fastest 12-bit analog-to-digital (A/D) converters in the market with sampling rates to 215 MHz. Coupling this high-speed A/D with two new Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGAs, the Model 6821 accepts one front-panel analog input and delivers digital output samples over two or four front panel data port (FPDP or FPDP II) connectors. A front panel low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) bus supports synchronous, triggered data acquisition across multiple boards. This capability is essential for multi-channel applications such as radar and direction finding.

Bustronic also offers VXS backplanes in a 5-slot Single Star and a 12-slot Dual Star configuration, with more developments on the way. A dual channel version and a 2 GHz version of the Pentek Model 6821 is also planned and will be compatible with the Bustronic backplane.