Secure rugged router.

AMETEK Abaco Systems has introduced the VSR8000, a fully rugged secure router featuring Juniper Networks® Junos® vSRX Virtual Firewall. This provides a commercial off the shelf (COTS) line replaceable unit (LRU) version of the recently launched 3U VPX VSR347D. This fully ruggedized secure router is a clear indicator of Abaco’s commitment to offering a full networking solution. The VSR8000 utilizes vSRX from Juniper Network in a fully rugged and SWaP optimized package to offer the only fully rugged solution on the market.

Pete Thompson, vice president of product management for Abaco Systems, said, “Providing hardened security in demanding environments is at the core of Abaco’s commitment to innovation. The VSR8000 delivers exactly what our customers need to succeed in demanding environments by providing a fully rugged, COTS secured router. This expands our offering of secured routers, giving customers the choice between a backplane deployed board (VSR347D) or LRU (VSR8000). We are committed to providing capable and highly optimized solutions.”

Abaco has taken its proven SBC347D single board computer (SBC), added an efficient, high-performance software environment, and integrated it into a fully rugged package that meets a wide range of MIL-STD qualifications including MIL-STD-810H for rain, sand, and salt fog. The VSR8000 combines Abaco’s knowledge and expertise with SBCs, networking, and rugged LRU systems into a market-leading rugged secure router. Designed to ease the transition from the RTR8GE, the VSR8000 saves on both time and cost for customers.

Acting as a drop-in replacement for the RTR8GE, this router’s combination of updated software, identical interfaces, and mechanical mounting points provides flexibility by offering the right options for legacy architectures. The software architecture provides a plan to overcome obsolescence and provides for the next generation of SBCs and other form factors using an x86 architecture processor.

With eight ports of 1000BASE-T, users can connect to multiple networks and devices while maintaining a high level of security for each one. The VSR8000 acts as an essential gateway between the outside world and local networks to keep intruders out and data secured. It is ideal for both new and existing users looking for a secure router system.

With high levels of environmental qualifications, it meets extreme demands presented by altitude, decompression, overpressure, sand, salt fog, rain, shock, and vibration. This secure router can be utilized on a wide range of applications, including: edge of network security; command and control; electronic warfare; radar; surveillance; situational awareness; imaging; AI and autonomy; rugged industrial and transportation; and other high-performance embedded computing applications.

@AbacoSys #Communications

New development chassis.

Flexible, cost-effective platform for open-standards-based application development, integration, testing, and demonstration.

The new DEVPX3 development chassis, from AMETEK Abaco Systems, is aligned to both OpenVPX and SOSA™ standards, providing a flexible, cost-effective platform for open-standards-based application development, integration, and testing. The chassis helps you maintain a robust, fast-paced development program by being able to quickly demonstrate and prove the end capability of your 3U VPX solutions at a system or board level.

The lab-ready DEVPX3 development chassis allows sensor and system solutions providers to shorten lab and demonstration schedules by providing a fast and efficient way to stay up to date on VPX advancements from Abaco and its partners. By re-using existing boards or purchasing economical in-stock air-cooled variants, software and firmware time to market is also shortened.

With eight individual slots, the DEVPX3 supports both conduction and air-cooled Abaco 3U modules aligned to OpenVPX and SOSA standards. The open frame and backplane are quickly configured with off-the-shelf cabling or rear transition modules.

“The DEVPX3 OpenVPX development chassis gives our customers an easy and economical way to solidify and accelerate their own systems as well as enable future products and programs,” says Pete Thompson, vice president of product management, Abaco Systems. “The introduction is yet another example of how Abaco supports our customers by providing exactly what they need from board to lab to rugged production solutions.”

@AMETEKInc #Laboratory 

Systems for long-range methane detection system.

System yields faster analysis and repair of oil and gas operations to reduce the accidental leakage of methane.

FPGA cards are to be supplied into a basin-wide methane scanning and monitoring system by Abaco Systems. The system yields faster analysis and repair of oil and gas operations to reduce the accidental leakage of methane, which accounts for about 10% of US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The initial win of $350K has a large prospective upside through ongoing development.

Pete Thompson, vice president of product management for Abaco Systems, said, “Abaco’s commitment to innovation is clearly evidenced in the design and ongoing use of our FMC104 and FMC108 for research into eye-safe, long-path laser systems and now long-distance gas detection systems. We are thrilled to be a part of research paving the way with groundbreaking technologies that change the future of emissions mitigation efforts.”

The continuous monitoring system employs centralized eye-safe laser beams spanning regions measuring multiple square miles to quickly detect, locate, and size methane leaks in a dense infrastructure. What began in a university research lab later expanded into an ongoing commercial product that shifts the industry paradigm away from on-site time-intensive monitoring of oil wells and natural gas production facilities. Instead of waiting weeks for data to be received and interpreted, action can be taken much faster, reducing emissions, and lowering costs. Abaco’s expertise in RF and FPGA design, innovative space-saving heatsink design, and longstanding relationship with the academic institution led to selection of the company’s FMC104 and FMC108 FPGA mezzanine cards for this system.

Both the FMC104 four-channel FPGA mezzanine card and the FMC108 eight-channel FPGA mezzanine card are fully compliant with the VITA 57.1-2008 standard. These cards allow for flexible sampling frequency control, analog input gain, and offset correction through serial communication with a carrier card. Equipped with power supply and temperature monitoring, they offer several power-down modes to switch off unused functions. Used in this application as digitizers, these cards bring proven technologies capable of low-cost continuous monitoring for fast methane leak detection and repair. Their inventive heat dissipation design allowed for a less constrained environment and decreased overall costs by eliminating the need for additional heatsinks.

@AbacoSys @AMETEKInc #PAuto #Oil

Small form factor line replaceable unit computers.

Abaco Systems announced the DAGRX and SAYBRX small form factor (SFF) line replaceable unit (LRU) computers featuring Intel™ processors and flexible I/O delivering high performance in a compact package. The modular I/O approach in both rugged and lab variants empower users to select what is necessary for the application, optimizing size, weight and power (SWaP). 

Pete Thompson, vice president of product management for Abaco Systems, said, “The DAGRX and SAYBRX show Abaco is committed to leading the industry in commercial off the shelf rugged processing for all size, weight and power applications. By filling this gap and providing an ultra-small form factor, we are uniquely positioned to provide a system level solution to customers at every entry point of the SWaP-C spectrum. Our innovative team is focused on technology advancement, quality, and attention to design in an effort to ensure our customers are able to succeed in every environment.”

The DAGRX and SAYBRX provide modular and scalable approaches to system design and architecture. When a 3U VPX system is either too large for the given space constrictions or too costly, the new systems allow developers to focus their resources and priorities on software and intellectual property. The rugged units are designed to be deployed in harsh environments (up to IP67). Lab variants can be used for development and test as well as full deployment in moderate environments (up to IP54). These computers address the need for ultra-compact, rugged computer systems for data and I/O processing in 8-36VDC applications in both commercial and military sectors and are ideal for use on mobile applications including industrial AGVs, off-road utility equipment (forestry, agriculture, construction, mining, etc.), railway, maritime, and avionics applications.

The DAGRX incorporates Intel’s smallest footprint CPU, the Intel ATOM® E3845 Quad Core 1.91 GHz, and is a best-in-class ultra-low SWaP-C solution. Power consumption depends on configuration but is typically around 13W@28VDC. The lab variant has an operating temperature range of -20°C to +60°C (baseplate), while the rugged variant has an operating temperature range of -40°C to +85°C (baseplate). DAGRX has extensive I/O flexibility and can be configured with: MIL-STD-1553, ARINC 429, GPS, serial I/O, Wi-Fi, digital I/O, 12-bit A/D, and CANbus, and up to five 1000BASE-T ports. All variants come standard with USB2.0, USB3.0, RS232. A single or multiple combination of I/O are available. Onboard memory starts at 64GB and is expandable through 2.5” SSD and mSATA options. The lab variants feature commercial style connectors for power and I/O. Rugged variants feature MIL-DTL-38999-style connectors for power and I/O. DAGRX supports Linux and Windows operating systems.

The SAYBRX features the Intel i7-9850HE @ 2.7 / 4.4 GHz TurboBoost and optional NVIDIA® Quadro® P2000 GPU. It offers all I/O available in the DAGRX but adds more USB, serial, DVI-I, and DisplayPort options. Expansion is via XMC/PMC, mPCIe and M.2. SAYBRX offers BIOS to support Windows, Linux, OpenGL, DirectX, NVIDIA® PhysX®, and NVIDIA 3D Vision®.

@AbacoSys #Pauto 

Innovation centre expands.

Abaco Systems plans to grow the company’s presence in Austin, (TX USA) the home of its DSP Innovation Center. This expansion follows Abaco’s February move to new headquarters in Huntsville, (AL USA) and is further evidence of the company’s investment in innovation and continued growth.

This significant expansion sees the facility grow almost 50% to over 16,000 square feet, and comes as a result of rapid growth in demand for Abaco’s digital signal processing solutions that are designed for advanced electronic warfare applications.

The additional space, which opened in July, will enable the expansion of the engineering facilities at the DSP Innovation Center. Not only will it receive substantial technical upgrades and additional laboratory facilities, but it will also benefit from re-equipping of the entire new workspace. This will provide a more ergonomic environment that will facilitate the collaboration that is at the heart of Abaco’s innovation.

Abaco is actively recruiting engineers, the addition of whom will see the current site headcount increase by more than 50% over the coming 18 months to more than 65 employees.

“Austin has an outstanding reputation as being a great place for leading edge technology companies to do business, and that makes it a perfect fit for our company – not least because of the access it gives us to the country’s most talented engineers,” said Rich Sorelle, President and CEO of Abaco. “This expansion of our DSP Innovation Center, in terms of both space and people, will allow us to continue to develop the innovative, pioneering computing solutions that enable our customers to provide our warfighters with a vital competitive edge.”

Abaco’s five Innovation Centers are at the heart of the company’s success. The team in Austin is responsible for the development of leading edge solutions based on advanced technologies including DSP, FPGA, and RFSoC. Innovative products designed and manufactured on site include the VP430 and the VP460. The Austin facility also provides the in-depth technical support customers sometimes require - all the way from design through development through optimization through deployment.

The VP430 Direct RF Processing System, which was the first 3U VPX COTS solution to feature the all new Xilinx® ZU27DR RF system-on-chip (RFSoC) technology, is also one of the densest analog FPGA DSP boards available, with eight ADC and DAC synchronized channels. It features the ability to synchronize multiple boards for even larger system applications.

@AbacoSys #PAuto #TandM #USA

Upgrade for Single Board Computer.

Abaco Systems has announced that its SOSA aligned rugged 3U VPX SBC3511 single board computer is now in production. This major advancement gives users variability by aligning with defense standards while improving lifecycle and supportability, lowers the total cost of ownership, and reduces risk.

“We’re delighted to announce this important milestone,” said Peter Thompson, Vice President, Product Management at Abaco Systems. “Many manufacturers are talking about SOSA alignment – but few, if any, are actually shipping product. We believe the many organizations committed to SOSA will very much welcome this news, as it allows them to move forward with real, deployable hardware.”

“The SBC3511 has attracted substantial interest since its announcement, because of its unique combination of capabilities. The SBC3511’s alignment with the SOSA standard, its leading-edge performance, its innovative thermal management, and its monitoring/reporting functionality, unite to deliver a platform that is unmatched in the industry.”

The SBC3511 is based around the highly integrated Intel® Xeon® E-2276ME 6-core/12-thread processor ('Coffee Lake Refresh') which operates at 2.8 GHz with TurboBoost up to 4.5 GHz, and is supported by a Xilinx Ultrascale+ FPGA which acts as the boards security hub, capable of hosting Abaco, third party or customer IP.

The SBC3511 was originally announced with support for 32 GBytes of DDR4 RAM and 80 GBytes of NVMe SSD. This has now been extended to 64 GBytes of DDR4 RAM and 256 GBytes of NVMe SSD, providing increased platform performance and throughput. In addition, the SBC3511’s IPMI subsystem has been upgraded to allow operation from 3.3V AUX power only, further enhancing its alignment with the SOSA standard.

The SBC3511 can also be supported with one or more elements of the Abaco software suite, including PBIT for early monitoring and reporting; CIBIT for non-intrusive ongoing and on-demand monitoring and reporting; and Health Toolkit, which acts as a system monitor to collect and report the health of all elements in the system, thanks to the VITA46.11 tier 1 and tier 2 interface over IPMI. All are fully compatible with the most frequently deployed operating systems and applications for defense and industry.

As well as leading edge performance, the SBC3511 features a unique thermal management design which allows deterministic high performance even at the extended temperatures typical of deployment on space-constrained platforms in combat zones. This contrasts less efficient thermal management designs that see a processor’s performance throttled back at high temperatures.

@AbacoSys #PAuto 

New location reflects and facilitates significent growth.

Abaco Systems has completed its move into its new headquarters, which significantly expands its footprint in Huntsville (AL USA).  The new location hosts a significant new Engineering Innovation Center, a purpose-built training facility, and close proximity to key customers. Abaco’s new headquarters has space available for further expansion in line with the company’s continued growth.

The move provides Abaco with the head room and resources that will allow the company to continue to develop the innovative embedded computing technologies and solutions that have enabled it to become a leading supplier to the defense market, with longstanding relationships with all major primes and tier-1 suppliers.

“Increased demand for electronics content to power contemporary platforms is driving significant growth at Abaco,” said Rich Sorelle, President and CEO. “Our expertise in areas such as modular, open-standards architectures; rugged reliability and advanced thermal management; artificial intelligence, machine learning and autonomy; software tools; high performance video and graphics; and advanced, secure networking has earned us positions on national asset platforms. Our new Engineering Innovation Center will accelerate these efforts and bring more value to our customers.”

Acquiring the new facility enables Abaco to expand the company’s manufacturing capacity at its original headquarters at Memorial Parkway SW. It also allows Abaco to respond to growing customer demand for shorter lead times as defense technology programs come under increasing pressure to move from conception to deployment more rapidly.

“This expansion is a milestone for Abaco and evidence of the continued success and growth of our business,” continued Sorelle. “We look for the most talented people to join us in our mission to solve our customers’ most complex embedded computing challenges. We believe the quality of our new facilities and the attractive location will prove to be a major draw to prospective employees.”

Huntsville is well known as a key location within the aerospace and defense industry, with high profile companies including Boeing, DRS, Georgia Tech Research Institute, L-3, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon – all of whom Abaco counts as customers – having a presence in the city.

 #Systems #Aerospace #Pauto  @AbacoSys

Ethernet switch for VME.

Abaco Systems has announced the GBX25 Level 3 Managed 6U VME NETernity Ethernet Switch. It provides unprecedented flexibility, delivering new levels of simplicity in configuring 6U VME network support and handling almost any network configuration while delivering industry-leading performance. The GBX25 represents the optimum switch solution for any user planning to create new systems based on the 6U VME architecture, or planning to refresh existing systems.

Supported interfaces include 10/100/1000BASE-T, 100BASE-FX, 1000BASE-SX, 1000BASE-LX, 10GBASE-SR and 10GBASE-LR.

Typical applications for the GBX25 include mission computing; fire control; radar; sensor/video aggregation and networking; and radar. It is also appropriate for industrial and automation applications.

For existing users of Abaco’s GBX24 and RM921B, the GBX25 represents a 100% pin-compatible technology insertion opportunity, delivering a simple, straightforward, cost-effective upgrade in capability and performance, while guaranteeing long term availability. It also represents an ideal enhancement for systems using Abaco’s RM922, GBX16 and GBX16A switches.

The GBX25 also provides support for the latest release of Abaco’s OpenWare switch management environment designed specifically for the military/aerospace environment, bringing new levels of flexibility, manageability and security.

A single flexible platform, the GBX25 allows virtually all 6U VME Ethernet switch solutions to be architected with a single product, whether front or rear (or both) I/O, copper or fiber, 1G or 10G. Up to four 10G SFP+ modules brings the ability to aggregate multiple 1G channels together. The 10G functionality makes it possible to use the switch as an aggregator of multiple video/sensor data streams to be sent via one or more 10G uplinks to other systems such as data servers or mission computers.

The use of SFP modules also brings the ability for customers to configure the GBX25 to fit their application precisely, and not be constrained by fixed configurations. Having a common platform allows for engineers to use the GBX25 in multiple systems without the need to relearn the capabilities of the product or how to configure the management software.

The dual I/O variant will offer up to 40 switched ports (24 rear VME ports and 16 front panel ports), potentially allowing for a single switch to replace two others that would need to be configured independently in existing systems. It can also make an important contribution to minimizing slot usage in a system, reducing its SWaP (size, weight and power) profile.

“While other companies are allowing their 6U VME offering to decline in competitiveness, Abaco remains committed to ensuring that users of VME systems continue to have access to the latest cutting edge switch fabric technologies, providing not only high performance but also longevity,” said Peter Thompson, Vice President, Product Management at Abaco Systems. “It is also further evidence of our commitment to our customers that we will help them minimize their long term cost of ownership.”

“The GBX25 offers increased capability in port density and data rates; lower power consumption than previous products; and the ability to guarantee the highest levels of security through the use of the latest release of OpenWare. It is a further demonstration of our belief in the long term viability of the VME architecture.”

The maximum non-blocking switching bandwidth of 340Gbps in the highest density version of the product provides more than sufficient headroom for even the most demanding applications.

Graphics and Video Capture XMC.

A powerful new rugged XMC graphics and video capture board has been announced by Abaco Systems. The NVP2102 takes advantage of the high performance of the NVIDIA® Pascal P2000 GPU with its 768 cores and 4 GBytes of GDDR5 memory to deliver 2.3 TeraFLOPS of peak performance with support for both CUDA® and OpenCL™. It is the first Abaco video/graphics XMC product to offer high performance input and output.

“We believe that the XMC form factor is perfect for the power- and space-constrained environments that typify today’s armored vehicles, fighter aircraft, submarines and unmanned platforms – but until now, they have not offered the processing capability necessary for the most advanced graphics and video applications,” said Peter Thompson, Vice President, Product Management at Abaco Systems. “The NVP2102 changes that, leveraging the capabilities of NVIDIA’s state-of-the-art GPU technology to deliver the functionality and performance that would have previously required a separate graphics card.”

Developed for deployment in the harsh and cramped conditions typical of battlefield platforms, the NVP2102 provides an optimum choice for all forms of graphics/video processing input/output. Typical applications include situational awareness, signals intelligence, ISR and radar, while the Pascal GPU’s high degree of parallelism also makes it an ideal fit for GPGPU applications including machine learning and autonomy.

The NVP2102 is designed for graphics and video generation, input and output, supporting four 3G-SDI inputs, capable of 1080p60; two 3G-SDI outputs, also capable of 1080p60; two DisplayPort 1.4 ports capable of 4K resolution @ 60Hz; and VGA. Support for H.265 (HEVC)/H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) encode/decode is provided.

For electronic warfare applications in which minimal latency is an essential requirement, the NVP2012 provides a solution not only by virtue of its direct interface to the host computer (as opposed to card-to-card connectivity) but also provides direct video capture direct to GPU memory – again, minimizing latency.

The board meets the MIL-STD-810G standard: in its conduction cooled form, it is specified to operate at temperatures of -40°C to +85°C and in its air cooled form it is specified to operate at temperatures of -40°C to +70°C.

The NVP2102 joins the recently announced NVP2000, which delivers the same high level of performance but provides graphics/video output only.

The NVP2102 also benefits from support for Abaco’s AXIS ImageFlex, an image processing and visualization toolkit enabling rapid development of high performance image processing, visualization and autonomy applications aimed at size, weight and power (SWaP) sensitive platforms. AXIS ImageFlex is focused on high performance GPU processing and graphics with interoperability with other programing paradigms such as OpenGL®, OpenCL™, CUDA and OpenCV.

@AbacoSys #communications

Rugged Single Board Computer.

Abaco Systems has announced the SBC3511 3U OpenVPX rugged single board computer, which provides a unique combination of high performance, advanced security and leading edge thermal management. Target applications for the new platform include C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) and the most demanding industrial applications.

The SBC3511’s high performance derives from the new, highly integrated Intel® Xeon® E-2176M 6-core/12-thread processor (formerly known as Coffee Lake) operating at 2.7GHz with TurboBoost up to 4.4GHz, 32 GBytes of DDR4 RAM and the inclusion of up to 256 GBytes of nVME SSD. It also features a 40 Gigabit Ethernet data plane, delivering not only a high speed interconnect but also alignment with the SOSA™ technical standard.

SOSA – Sensor Open Systems Architecture - creates a common framework for transitioning sensor systems to an open systems architecture, based on key interfaces and open standards established by industry-government consensus.

The new single board computer includes a range of security features designed to assist with user-defined Anti-Tamper and Information Assurance strategies. The onboard Xilinx® Zynq® UltraScale+™ MPSoC’s built-in security capabilities include a physical unclonable function (PUF), user-accessible hardened cryptographic blocks, asymmetric authentication, side channel attack protection, and other silicon-based AT features. It can be utilized to instantiate a range of Abaco-defined security features, or by customers to embed application-specific features. Support is also provided for Intel’s Trusted Execution Technology.

The SBC3511 features a unique thermal management design which allows deterministic high performance even at the extended temperatures typical of deployment on space-constrained platforms in combat zones. This is in contrast to less efficient thermal management designs that see a processor’s performance throttled back at high temperatures.

“The SBC3511 is the result of extensive feedback from our customers about what they want,” said Peter Thompson, Vice President, Product Management at Abaco Systems. “Their priorities are maximum processing power under all conditions for advanced applications; comprehensive provision for security; and interoperability. The SBC3511 not only delivers on these requirements, but is also supported by Abaco’s extensive ecosystem that includes graphics processors, FPGA and DSP boards, switches and carrier cards to enable the creation of complete systems.”

Development kits, including starter cages and accessories, are also available.

The SBC3511 also includes a x8 PCIe™ Gen 3 XMC site; one USB 2.0 port and one USB 3.1 port; a DisplayPort™ interface; two serial ports; a SATA port; and up to eight GPIO pins.

Also included is a rich range of software options. AMI UEFI includes support of BIOS Guard for signed image execution. Open Linux® (Fedora), Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS (Linux), Wind River Linux, VxWorks® 7, Windows® 10 will also be available, as will comprehensive deployed test software (PBIT, CBIT and IBIT).

@AbacoSys #PAuto 

Avionics devices.

Abaco Systems has launched a new family of avionics devices that feature the Thunderbolt™ 3 interface, including Thunderbolt 3-to-PMC/XMC interfacing with ARINC 429 and MIL-STD-1553 protocols.

The new platforms have integrated Thunderbolt 3 to establish a new standard for high-speed, low latency portable devices for a broad range of avionics applications. All of the Thunderbolt 3-equipped products include a rugged, all-aluminum design along with Power-over-Thunderbolt 3 to maximize portability.

The first of the new platforms include

• The RCEI-830A-TB supports up to 16 Tx and 16 Rx ARINC channels with a range of flexible I/O configurations. It provides complete, integrated databus functionality for ARINC 429, ARINC 615-3 dataloader, ARINC 717, ARINC 575 and selected 2-wire, 32-bit protocols. Configurations with ARINC 717 provide support for both ARINC 717 HBP (Harvard Bi-Phase) and BPRZ (Bi-Polar Return to Zero) across a range of bit rate/sub-frame combinations. • The QPM-1553-TB provides high levels of performance, flexibility and interface density for MIL-STD-1553A/B. Standard features include 1 MByte of RAM per channel, real-time bus playback, aperiodic message insertion, error injection/detection, conditional BC branching, 64-bit, 25 nanosecond message timetagging, and "one-shot" BC operation.

“Increasingly, our customers are finding that their existing portable avionics equipment is becoming obsolete,” said Peter Thompson, Vice President, Product Management at Abaco Systems. “Modern PCs and laptops rarely feature the ExpressCard or PCMCIA interfaces on which our customers have historically relied. While USB and Ethernet theoretically provide alternatives, their inherent latency limits real-time interaction with data, and channel density is limited.”

“Beyond this,” Thompson continued, “recent government-mandated security requirements have presented a challenge to avionics data loader customers in that migrating to newer operating systems and hardware creates significant technical obstacles.”

“Thunderbolt 3 is rapidly becoming the de facto standard for peripherals: 40Gpbs is the fastest PC connection available,” concluded Thompson. “These new products, combined with Abaco’s proven, flexible and easy-to-use software provide new levels of performance and usability, and deliver invaluable tools for any organization involved in bus analysis/simulation, system integration or flight-line - including data loading and maintenance, repair and overhaul - and will provide a clear path forward for our customers.”

In line with Abaco’s commitment to minimizing long term cost of ownership, the new product family is backwards compatible with many existing Abaco avionics devices in its support for Abaco’s feature-rich API and BusTools UI.

@AbacoSys #Avionics

CTO fis expert in open architecture COTS.

Abaco Systems has appointed Lorne Graves as Chief Technology Officer.

Lorne Graves

Mr. Graves brings 20 years of experience as an engineering executive, working closely with various prime contractors on several key Electronic Warfare, SIGINT, and radar programs. Most recently, Mr. Graves served as Chief Technologist at Mercury Systems. Prior to Mercury Systems, he was Senior Design Engineer at Extreme Networks (Nasdaq GS: EXTR), a networking company.

“We are thrilled to welcome Lorne to Abaco’s management team as the Company embarks on its next phase of growth. Lorne has a tremendous reputation in the embedded computing market, and his leadership will advance Abaco’s position in open architecture COTS solutions,” said Mr. Rich Sorelle, President and CEO of Abaco Systems.

“I am excited to join Abaco and contribute to our mission of advancing the capabilities of the warfighter through game-changing mission ready embedded technologies,” said Mr. Graves.

@abacosys #PAuto 

Direct RFSoC Processing System.

Abaco Systems has announced that, not only have they begun full production of its newly-announced VP430 Direct RF Processing System – first customer shipments occurred in September - but that it is actively creating inventory for those customers needing short-turn delivery before the end of the year.

“We’re seeing enormous demand for the VP430 - beyond even our expectations – with numerous enquiries as to whether we can deliver by the end of December,” said Peter Thompson, Vice President, Product Management at Abaco. “I’m delighted to say that our answer to that question is that we can indeed. We’re getting excellent service from Xilinx, providing all the production parts we need in order to manufacture boards and provide our customers with the fast-turn shipment they say they need.”

As well as having comprehensively characterized the performance of the VP430 (the data is available upon request), Abaco has published a white paper designed to help developers understand the capabilities of the system. ‘Technologies for responding to rapid developments in cognitive RF and EW’ describes strategies to address emerging EW threats by leveraging reconfigurable hardware in a multi-processor system architecture, employing a low latency processing powerhouse with FPGAs and RFSoCs, and how to select the right processor architecture for the job.

The VP430 is capable of enabling the most advanced electronic warfare applications, as well as many others. Examples of the applications either under development, or planned for development, include a real time passive optical network, a next generation direction finding system for battlefield communications and a new electronic attack system. 

Designed for advanced electronic warfare applications requiring MIMO (multiple input/output), beamforming, sensor processing and radar signal processing capabilities, the VP430 is a major step forward in performance and density, enabling the use of fewer boards and much less power while delivering increased processing throughput. In fact, for comparable capability, it occupies one fourth of the slots that earlier generation solutions would require.

The VP430 includes the option to be built with a FireFly™ 8-channel VITA 66.4 fiber optic interface for transfers of greater than 12 GBps for applications in which the throughput of the native VPX PCI Express® Gen3 data plane is inadequate or when a remote client requires streaming data.

Responding to the cost- and complexity challenge of RF systems with multiple channels - more channels means more expensive and large RF signal up/down conversion and signal conditioning - the VP430 enables direct RF sampling which can be implemented in the digital domain, bringing greater flexibility to the signal processing chain. Additionally, simplified integration with RF sampling devices removes the complexity of JESD204B high speed serial interfaces

The new Xilinx RFSoC is a revolutionary step in integration technology bringing a combination of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) processing capability, a multi-processor embedded ARM® Cortex-A53 Application processing unit (APU), an ARM real time processing unit (RPU) and eight input analog-to-digital converter and eight digital-to-analog converter channels. Additionally, the Zynq® Ultrascale+™ architecture integrates all this with features to enable high security IP protection. The RFSoC brings extreme analog bandwidth with a sustained throughput of 6 GSPS per channel and greater than 12 GBps per channel digital offload capability.

• Acronyms? See our Acronyms Page. 

@AbacoSys #FPGA

FPGA Board.

The VP869 high performance 6U OpenVPX FPGA processing board has been announced by Abaco Systems.  Featuring two Xilinx® UltraScale+™ FPGAs and a Zynq® 7000 Series multiprocessor system-on-chip (MPSoC), it provides a form, fit and function upgrade for the VP868, providing existing users with a cost-effective performance enhancement. The VP869 can deliver up to 3.8x more DSP resources and 2.4x more integrated memory than its predecessor.

The VP869 is designed for the most demanding mission critical applications where extreme FPGA processing and I/O bandwidth capabilities are needed. Typical applications include radar/sonar processing, software defined radio, advanced digital beamforming, multi-channel digital receivers/transmitters and satellite communications systems.

Two industry standard (VITA 57) FMC+ sites are provided on the VP869 for high performance analog I/O, digital communications or video input.

“Aerospace programs must have the latest I/O and signal processing technology available – and the VP869 delivers to that requirement, demonstrating our commitment to bringing state of the art technology to our customers as rapidly as possible,” said Pete Thompson, Vice President, Product Management, Abaco Systems. “It is flexible and cost-effective and, because it is based exclusively on industry standards, ease of integration and upgrade are assured – reducing cost and minimizing time to deployment.”

The VP869’s flexibility derives in part from the opportunity it provides to choose either of two Virtex Ultrascale+ FPGAs, allowing the optimum application-specific trade-off between performance, power consumption and price.

A key feature of the VP869 is its extreme backplane bandwidth, with over 72 high speed serial lanes routed to the backplane delivering 594 Gbps of data throughput for advanced processing and offload applications. 24 bidirectional high speed serial lanes provide up to 300 Gbps of data bandwidth to and from the FMC+ I/O modules, enabling the utilization of the latest ADC and DAC technology for next generation wideband applications.

In some applications, the VP869’s onboard Zynq 7000 device with its embedded ARM® cores can provide the control functionality that would normally be delivered by a single board computer, creating the opportunity to minimize slot usage and thus size, weight and power.

The VP869’s Zynq 7000 MPSoC also includes broad security functionality – such as encrypted bit streams and secure boot - that enables sensitive IP to be safeguarded.

Reduced time to deployment is significantly enhanced by Abaco’s provision of a comprehensive set of aids designed to simplify and speed development. These include a fully featured open board support package that provide a highly functional reference design example to simplify integration of application-specific IP. Stellar IP - an FPGA development tool – and the 4FM GUI user interface for controlling and monitoring the hardware are also provided, as are a Xilinx Vivado project and VHDL source code.

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Image processing for AI applications.

Release 2.0 of Abaco Systems' powerful, flexible ImageFlex image processing and visualization toolkit has been released. Leveraging the enormous power of GPU technology, ImageFlex provides an easy-to-use API framework to considerably speed and simplify the development, optimization and maintenance of advanced AI applications – especially those targeted at autonomous vehicles.

ImageFlex enables developers of image/video processing and visualization applications on GPUs to be substantially more productive by hiding the complexity of the underlying software layers, while maintaining high performance. By providing an OpenGL® abstraction layer (no OpenGL experience is required) it can reduce the number of lines of code required by a factor of five, radically reducing the effort and time needed in order to create, test and maintain the application. This means faster time-to-market as well as lower development cost.

New features for ImageFlex Release 2.0 include:

• Tools and reference examples enabling AI-based applications to be deployed on Abaco’s NVIDIA®-based GPU products.
• Provision of a reference target tracking example - a core building block for tracking applications.
• High quality, GPU-optimized image stabilization.

ImageFlex is highly complementary to Abaco’s NVIDIA GPU-based GVC1000 and GVC2000 hardware platforms, which use the NVIDIA Jetson supercomputer on a module for AI computing at the edge. This allows the creation of complete solutions for Degraded Visual Environment (DVE), 360° situational awareness, helmet mount sight processing, target identification and tracking and other EO/IR processing applications. It is portable across a range of graphics processing architectures and operating systems, and is potentially safety certifiable.

“ImageFlex significantly reduces our customers’ software engineering effort in the development and deployment of applications for EO/IR platforms and autonomy, and is unique in its ability to do so,” said John Muller, Chief Growth Officer at Abaco Systems. “Combined with our powerful, flexible hardware platforms, ImageFlex is evidence not only of our experience and expertise in AI-based graphics, video and visualization applications, but also of our commitment to providing our customers with more complete solutions.”

The ImageFlex API provides functions for a range of image processing operations from simple image transformations through to more complex lens distortion correction and image morphing. It includes optimized, high quality image fusion, stabilization, tracking and distortion correction algorithms, as well as a comprehensive set of reference application examples that provide core software building blocks. ImageFlex also provides tools and reference examples demonstrating how to integrate with sensors and deploy artificial intelligence-based applications such as object detection and recognition.
In addition, ImageFlex provides an innovative, high performance image fusion function that can fuse image data from multiple sources of different resolutions. The algorithm adaptively adjusts to pull through the regions of highest contrast in each source to a produce a fused result, enabling an observer or processing stage to act on the combined information of the sources.

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Veteran in embedded electronics appointed CEO.

Abaco Systems (“Abaco”), a provider of leading-edge rugged, embedded mission-ready systems, today announced the appointment of Rich Sorelle as Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. Abaco is a portfolio company of Veritas Capital.

Rich Sorelle

“The embedded computing market is at a vibrant and exciting stage,” said Mr. Sorelle. “Over the past two years, Abaco has established itself as a leading, independent provider of advanced computing and radio frequency systems, and I’m excited to help the company enter its next stage of growth and capitalize on the significant opportunities in the market. We will continue to invest in our core offerings and partner with customers to deliver the next generation of capabilities critical to their continued success.”

Mr. Hugh D. Evans, a Managing Partner of Veritas Capital, said, “We are pleased to welcome Rich as Abaco’s new leader, based in Huntsville. Rich’s wide-ranging expertise in the defense electronics markets, proven track record of capturing transformational new program wins, deep relationships with aerospace, defense and government customers, and successful history of new product introductions and operational excellence will advance Abaco’s position in the rapidly accelerating embedded computing market. Rich will drive the Company’s growth and deliver innovative technology solutions to the nation’s most critical programs and systems.”

Mr. Sorelle brings over 30 years of experience as a defense electronics executive across a variety of roles, with deep professional experience in manufacturing, engineering, program management, and business development. He joins Abaco from a 20-year career at ITT/Exelis, where he most recently served as President of the Electronic Systems division. In this role, Mr. Sorelle was responsible for creating and managing a strategic platform focused on Electronic Warfare. Mr. Sorelle started his career at Grumman Corporation, a predecessor of Northrop Grumman, and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the New York Institute of Technology.

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40 Gigabit Ethernet switch.

An innovative SWE540 6U OpenVPX 40 Gigabit Ethernet switch has just been announced by Abaco Systems. It provides high speed Ethernet connectivity for Abaco’s latest generation of high performance computing solutions such as the SBC627 single board computer and the recently-announced DSP282A digital signal processor. This enables the company to deliver significant performance upgrades for its growing range of rapidly-deployable, complete, pre-integrated mission ready systems. These solutions target high performance embedded computing (HPEC) applications requiring the transfer of large amounts of data with the lowest possible latency such as radar, surveillance, situational awareness and imaging.

The rugged SWE540 is uniquely powerful and flexible, representing the only 6U OpenVPX 40GigE switch currently available that supports full Layer 2/3 features including hardware Layer 3 forwarding at fabric speed rates. Layer 3 switching and routing is a critical requirement for advanced security and complex networks. It provides dynamic routing over standard routing protocols, enabling a flexible range of network/fabric configurations and applications.

Superior patent-pending cooling technology limits system thermal load while still enabling the SWE540 to run at peak performance, further enhancing its robust reliability.

The SWE540 supports multiple OpenVPX profiles and uses the latest high performance switch silicon technology to support 40 Gigabit Ethernet performance across 20 ports, allowing configuration within demanding HPEC systems and a broad range of Abaco’s mission ready systems.
It also provides a straightforward, cost-effective upgrade for existing users of Abaco’s GBX460 switch, maximizing the long term value of customers’ investments while enabling a significant performance increase for those looking to achieve faster transfers of large amounts of data with lower latencies.

The switch features Abaco’s latest OpenWare™ switch management software, allowing it to be easily customized for specific customer requirements. OpenWare provides support for a wide range of network protocols and MIBs (management information bases) with extensive capabilities for multicast, Quality of Service, VLANs, and differentiated services. The OpenWare management interface may be accessed via serial console, SNMP, Telnet, SSH or web interface.

The combination of the SWE540’s hardware and the OpenWare switch management software delivers comprehensive security capabilities. Designed for deployment in security-sensitive mission critical applications, SWE540 features include denial of service attack prevention, user password mechanisms with multiple levels of security and military level authorization schemes including 802.1X and sanitization to allow the overwrite of non-volatile storage if a system is compromised. Survivability is also enhanced by ECC protection on the management processor memory which offers higher reliability in harsh environments.

“The SWE540 is representative of over 20 years of Abaco’s leadership in network switch design and network engineering for mission critical applications and will enable us to deliver a step-change in performance for Abaco’s mission ready systems and customer-built systems alike,” said Mrinal Iyengar, VP, Product Management, Abaco Systems. “Other 40 Gigabit Ethernet solutions offer limited routing capability – either by not offering L3 routing at all, or by limiting it to static routing. This provides far less flexibility, limiting the use to simpler, fixed networks. The SWE540 provides L3 forwarding in the switch fabric, supported by routing protocols such as RIPv3, OSPF and so on – making it ideally suited for networks that are more complex, security sensitive, or that will be required scale and be upgraded over time.”

The SWE540 is available in both air-cooled and conduction-cooled versions, and can optionally support four QSFP+ and two 1000BaseT ports on the front panel. Rear transition modules are available to enable access to 40 Gigabit and one Gigabit ports off the backplane.

#Ethernet @AbacoSys #Pauto 

Embedded Industry Technologist appointed!

Mrinal Iyengar has been appointed as Vice President, Product Management with Abaco Systems.

Mrinal Iyengar

Iyengar’s most recent assignment was as Director, Advanced Systems at UTC Aerospace Systems (UTAS), one of the world’s largest suppliers of technologically advanced aerospace and defense products, where she was responsible for product development of new reconnaissance and surveillance sensor systems.

With bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Massachusetts and NorthEastern University and an MBA from MIT, Iyengar was previously with Goodrich Corporation and Northrop Grumman.

In her new role, Iyengar will bring her in-depth understanding of the needs of customers in the embedded computing industry with a brief to drive the creation of innovative, mission-ready systems that will minimize program risk, accelerate time to deployment and reduce long term cost of ownership.

In the past ten months, Abaco has added significantly to its talented team which has grown from ~600 to over 800 as the company looks to put in place the resource necessary to deliver market-leading customer service and support.

“We are delighted to strengthen our leadership team still further with the recruitment of Mrinal who brings outstanding vision, market/customer/technology understanding and extensive industry experience to our product management function,” said Bernie Anger, CEO, Abaco Systems. “Her focus will be on managing the introduction of an accelerating stream of innovative new products, with particular emphasis on minimizing the lead-time between conception and delivery. She will play a vital role in supporting our customers’ success.”

“I’ve grown to know Abaco well over the years, and I’m thrilled to be joining at such an exciting time in the company’s rapid development,” said Iyengar. “This is a dynamic organization with customers at its heart, and ambitious plans to make a real difference to the industry. That’s something I’m really looking forward to, and to which feel I can make a significant contribution.”

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VP at data, analytics, communications and sensor processing leaders.

Abaco Systems has appointed Kevin Campbell as Vice President, Engineering. He joins from Onmyx, where he was Chief Technology Officer.

Kevin Campbell

Previously, Campbell – who holds Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering and Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering degrees, both from the University of Alberta – held a range of increasingly senior posts at GE, culminating in promotion to Chief Technology Officer for GE Healthcare, Clinical Business Solutions.

He is is located at Abaco’s Huntsville, Ala headquarters.

This appointment is the latest addition to the company’s rapidly growing pool of talent, which has seen Abaco grow from ~600 employees in December, 2015 to over 800. Resource is being added across the board as Abaco looks to put in place the capacity to handle an increasing number of customer programs and to ensure they are delivered on time, while also accelerating the development of growing numbers of innovative new products.

“I've known Kevin professionally for over 20 years and have witnessed his ability to drive engineering organizations to achieve seemingly impossible things across a number of mission-critical industries, from industrial automation to transportation and healthcare,” said Bernie Anger, CEO, Abaco Systems. “I am very confident that Kevin's cross-functional collaborative approach, ‘can-do’ attitude, passion for innovation and strong business acumen, combined with the capabilities of our 240+ engineers, will accelerate the transformation of the Abaco portfolio so we can truly deliver on our vision of ‘mission-ready embedded systems’ for our customers.”

“I’m delighted to be joining Abaco as the company continues to strengthen its leadership in the rugged embedded computing market,” said Campbell. “I’m particularly looking forward to the challenge of helping create the innovative products and solutions that can help our customers succeed, and to leading a team wholly committed to bringing those solutions to the market in the shortest possible time.”

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Signal processing portfolio strengthened by acquisition.

Abaco Systems has acquired 4DSP LLC of Austin (TX USA). Founded in 2004, 4DSP designs and manufactures commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) high speed digital signal processing and data acquisition solutions based on FPGA technology to address the specific requirements of aerospace, defense, biomedical, communications and semiconductor applications.

The company provides solutions for applications such as image processing, software defined radio, radar, sonar, airborne surveillance and medical imaging. 4DSP products are complemented by its engineering services, which include the development of custom hardware, FPGA firmware and software, as well as turn-key solutions.

Pierrick Vulliez, CEO of 4DSP, and his team will join Abaco with immediate effect.

The acquisition underscores Abaco’s plans to serve customers with mission ready systems based on best-in-class open architecture platforms that reduce risk and accelerate time to deployment.

“The addition of 4DSP and, more importantly, Pierrick and his team, substantially strengthens Abaco’s signal processing portfolio, helping us accelerate our plans to deliver our customers the industry’s best mission ready systems,” said Bernie Anger, CEO, Abaco Systems. “4DSP has an outstanding reputation in the embedded computing industry, and especially in the defense and aerospace industry, for its technical and engineering excellence and the quality of its products.”

“I have spoken to a number of 4DSP’s customers, and their feedback has been unanimously positive,” continued Anger. “We’re delighted that 4DSP is now part of Abaco Systems. What they bring is highly complementary to our existing offering, and I believe they will help us deliver an even more complete range of innovative solutions that will improve our customers’ competitiveness and help them succeed. We are also confident that this move will be very beneficial for current 4DSP customers, who will benefit from accelerated investments in expansion of 4DSP’s signal processing portfolio and additional field support resources.”

“We’re thrilled to become part of Abaco Systems,” said Pierrick Vulliez, CEO, 4DSP. "There is no doubt that this move will enable us to progress to the next level, leveraging Abaco’s global reach and scale. We look forward to helping Abaco increase the breadth and depth of solutions we can offer to customers.”

@AbacoSys #PAuto @4DSP_LLC