Bustronic unveils latest switched serial backplanes

Bustronic Corp. has unleashed a new line of VXS Switched Serial Backplanes compliant to the new VITA 41.0 specification. The 12-slot VXS backplane features a dual star switched fabric topology and a special high-grade material to maximize performance.

Fully backwards-compatible to VME/VME64x, VXS utilizes a new 6.4Gbps high-speed connector across the P0 section of a VME64x backplane. The new connector allows the use of switched fabric signals for higher bandwidth and reliability. The VITA 41 specification for VXS includes VITA 41.1 for Infiniband and VITA 41.2 for RapidIO traffic. In this way, designers will have the flexibility of plugging in standard VME64x cards for parallel bus only, integrate new payload and switch cards for parallel bus and switch fabric transport.

The company's 12-slot VXS backplane features two fabric (hub) slots and ten payload slots. To improve the signal integrity of the backplane, Nelco-4000 13SI material was used for the PCB instead of standard FR-4. The material has a low dielectric constant and low loss tangent values at high frequencies, resulting in much higher performance. The routing was achieved in an 18-layer controlled-impedance stripline design.

Bustronic says its 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 pricing for the VXS backplane line is under $2,000 in volumes, with a four week lead time.