Military Embedded Systems

Increased U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) funding is targeting radar and electronic warfare (EW) systems to counter complex threats such as electronic counter-countermeasures, to stay ahead of their adversaries. This demand is also driving innovation in the military test and measurement community to add sophistication and efficiency to the test and evaluation process to improve capability. Meanwhile, cognitive EW applications are inspiring new test designs.

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama. The U.S. Army - FACE and SOSA Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM) is still on for September 14, 2021 at the Von Braun Center in Huntsville, Alabama. This year's event will feature a Keynote Speaker and expert presentations on Future Airborne Capability Environment (FACE) and Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) related topics by a cross-section of the defense community, industry, and academia.

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona. The VMEbus technical standard has enjoyed a very long life supporting military systems. At almost 40 years old, it’s probably the longest lasting single standard in the history of computing; it has kept up with technology by supporting backwards compatibility while enabling technology upgrades and is still in use across a broad range of applications. This webcast of industry experts will provide a brief history of VMEbus as well as why and how it remains the reliable stalwart of critical systems used across multiple defense platforms. The speakers will discuss how legacy and EOL issues are dealt with, addressing security issues, support for existing and newer operating systems, and how having a healthy ecosystem with wide vendor support has enabled the standard to such enjoy long-lasting technology refreshes and migration. Use case will also be presented along with a sneak-peek at how some platforms are examining next-gen platform migration from VME to OpenVPX and SOSA.

UNITED KINGDOM. Concurrent Technologies announced a new 3U VPX conduction-cooled plug in card based on the Intel Xeon W-11000E Series processor (formerly known as Tiger Lake-H) for use as the system controller in high performance sensor based solutions in the defense space.

This spring Mercury Systems acquired Pentek, a designer of FPGA single-board computers, data-acquisition boards, recording systems, and other products for radar, signals intelligence (SIGINT), and electronic warfare (EW) applications. In this podcast, Neal Austin, Vice President and General Manager of the Mixed Signal Business Unit within Mercury Systems and Rodger Hosking, co-founder and VP of Pentek Systems deep dive into the acquisition, where Pentek will fit within Mercury, and how the acquisition impacts the Mercury efforts within the Sensor Open Systems Architecture (SOSA) Consortium. They also cover design trends in the radar and electronic warfare markets,  commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) procurement, the impact AI and 5G will have on military electronics, and tackle the engineering recruitment challenges defense companies face.

Pixus Technologies, a provider of embedded computing and enclosure solutions, has announced the launch of Pixus Technologies USA Corporation with an office opening near Buffalo, New York. The company has joined the Sensor Open Standard Architecture (SOSA) Consortium.

ANDOVER, Mass. Mercury Systems has launched a new line of safety-certifiable 3U OpenVPX SOSA aligned avionics modules that are aimed at accelerating critical avionics applications and streamlining subsystem development and platform safety certification.

Pixus Technologies, a provider of embedded computing and enclosure solutions, has announced a new 3-slot 3U OpenVPX backplane with an additional VITA 62 PSU slot.

ANDOVER, Mass. Mercury Systems has announced the EnsembleSeries HDS6705 blade server, a powerful, general-purpose processing 6U OpenVPX blade server with built-in security for extremely demanding defense and aerospace applications.