VMEbus Switched Serial Standard ratified

FEBRUARY 19--The VMEbus International Trade Association (VITA; Fountain Hills, AZ) announced the ratification of the VMEbus Switched Serial Standard (VXS), or VITA 41, which will provide OEMs with up to 50 times more bandwidth than the VME64 parallel bus on individual board-to-board transfers, for a total of up to 900 times more aggregate bandwidth in a maximum VXS configuration. Manufacturers can now extend the life of their legacy VMEbus-based systems while increasing bandwidth and following an easy migration path from parallel bus to switched serial fabrics, as both will coexist in a VMEbus system at the same time. This means that manufacturers will be able to develop products incorporating switched serial fabrics such as InfiniBand 4X, Serial RapidIO 4X, Fibre Channel, and 10-Gbit Ethernet, while they continue to benefit from investments made over the years in VME, an extremely well-known and stable form factor.

Key benefits and elements of VXS include the addition of a switched serial interconnect to VMEbus, coincident with the VMEbus parallel bus, which is accomplished by adding a new P0 connector for passing the high-speed signals; accommodation of multiple open standard technologies for the links, but not necessarily at the same time; backward compatibility with the VMEbus ecosystem in that the traditional 6U high, 160 mm, Eurocard form factor is maintained; and the ability to bring double the dc power onto each VMEbus card, which is accomplished by pulling additional current through the existing power pins on the existing P1 and P2 five-row connectors.