VME industrial chassis suits hostile environments

Thales has introduced a full set of COTS 19-inch rack mount VME industrial chassis—the R2U4S, R4U8S and R8U16S. These products enable the deployment of industrial-grade hardware in hostile environments, the company said.

Available in 2U, 4U and 8U, these enclosures can house a range of 6U VME64x back-planes featuring P0 connectors of 4, 8 and 16 slot, respectively. The back-planes route both the intelligent chassis management bus and the intelligent platform management bus, which are part of the intelligent platform management interface described in the VITA 38 recommendations. The IPMI shelf management of the end system can be easily met by the addition of a baseboard management controller in the payload accommodated nearby the power supply unit (PSU).

The 2U and 4U models are designed for VME horizontal load applications, with either 100 percent front or 100 percent rear access. The 8U model hosts the cards vertically as recommended for use in most naval applications. All these products accommodate 80mm depth VITA36 standard rear-transition-modules. An optional front panel covers either the front or the rear card-frame area. A cable way allow front to rear wiring. The enclosures are supplied with a modular PSU able to provide enough power to build high performance computing clusters. The default value is 400W, 8,700W and 1,200W for the 2U, 4U and 8U products, respectively. The voltage balance can be tune easily by changing the modules of the PSU. Furthermore, the PSU can be twinned with another one in order to assure the redundancy feature required in safety critical applications.

Pricing for the R2U4S starts at $5,800 in small volume and subject to specifications. All the enclosures are covered by Thales Computers' Long Term Supply program. This offer guarantees customers a multiyear supply of the product beyond its active life, a unique offering for Intel and PowerPC processor-based products.