How will the VITA 100 standards, building on the lessons of VPX and OpenVPX, redefine high-performance embedded computing to meet future density, speed, and power demands while ensuring long-term interoperability and industry adoption?

Matthew Claudio, Hardware Engineer, EIZO

Two of the key lessons reflected in the development of the VITA 100 family of standards are system interoperability and future proofing. The Working Groups are taking a highly detailed, deliberate approach to ensure every piece of the specification fits together clearly and consistently, leaving no room for misinterpretation—yet maintaining the flexibility needed for innovation. By developing VITA 100 in parallel with emerging technologies, we are creating an opportunity not only to keep VPX-based systems aligned with today’s bleeding-edge capabilities, but also to seamlessly adopt the next generation of advancements as they arrive. This proactive approach raises the bar for what designers can achieve, driving faster development cycles, greater system efficiencies, and entirely new application possibilities. In doing so, VITA 100 not only future-proofs interoperability across the industry but also broadens the horizon of what is possible in rugged, mission-critical embedded computing.

The success of VITA 100 is dependent on its greatest strength, the collaborative foundation behind its development. The VITA 100 Working Groups have done an excellent job bringing together integrators, suppliers, and producers at every level of the value chain—ensuring that the standards are informed by real-world experiences and practical implementation knowledge.  This broad participation will help immensely with the transition from OpenVPX to VITA 100.  By involving the right expertise early and often, we are laying the groundwork for rapid industry adoption and long-term sustainability of the next generation of embedded computing systems.

Adam P. Dziedzic, Principal Firmware Engineer, SRC, Inc. 

VITA 100 doubles the electrical connections and quadruples the link bandwidth, enabling future capabilities. This new standard builds on top of the OpenVPX foundations and streamlines the interfaces for more consistent modules. Enhanced interoperability is enabled by the increased pin count. Where OpenVPX defined the planes and supported competing standards assigned to the same wires, VITA 100 is able to dedicate the Expansion Plane to the PCIe interface and allocate separate pins for LVDS and single-ended discrete signals. 

Beyond the electrical connectors, deconflicting the interfaces is possible with the VITA 100.31 apertures as well. While the 3U form factor remains constrained, the addition of 4U can more easily meet the competing demands. System designers will find it easier to choose a larger aperture for clean modular separation of fiber optics and coax connections because there is minimal impact to the electrical connector interfaces. That architecture cleanliness in 4U directly maps to 6U as well, with those 4U interface definitions directly mapping into two instances defining the 6U profiles.

As devices grow larger and support more compute density, VITA 100 rises to the challenge. Defining it from a system perspective, increased power to a module, conduction cooling enhancements and more consistent support of liquid cooling, with the addition of a 4U size for additional board real estate relative to 3U or improved density relative to 6U-- VITA 100 brings enhancements across the board. VITA 100 is ready for the challenges existing standards cannot meet.

Using data center rack advancements as an indicator of how the future embedded systems will evolve, it is reasonable to expect long term interoperability. With the hardware using standard interface foundations that map directly to servers and racks, the real goal is supporting rapid advancement of capabilities in software; best realized using periodically upgraded modular hardware. The reality of portable software is ready for the rugged embedded Plug-In Module servers, and a modernized system management architecture being developed in VITA 100.20 can orchestrate these VITA 100 systems of the future.

Mike Walmsley, Industry Standards and Product Management, TE Connectivity

A key driver for next generation architecture was the need for higher bandwidth, both in terms of higher pin count and increasing data rates. The connectors selected for the VITA 100 plug-in module to backplane interface provide almost double the pin count over OpenVPX and support 4X the data rate per differential pair.

TE’s MULTIGIG HD connectors, being standardized in VITA 100.30, leverage the ruggedness and modularity of the wafer-based VITA 46 VPX connectors but have significant advancements for shielding required to support 100G Ethernet and PCIe Gen 6.

The connectors have two sizes – a 4-pair design (4 differential pairs per wafer) and 6-pair.  4-pair meets the physical space needed for 1” slot pitches and is compatible with XMC cards on the PIM card. 6-pair is intended for high density switch applications that require higher pin counts and require 1.2” slot pitch.

The connector’s power wafers have 2X the current rating of those in VITA 46 connectors so we can support higher power levels for PIMs. And the slimmer VITA 100 guide hardware provides space for liquid cooling in 3U, 4U and 6U form factors.

As we are defining slot profiles in the base standard VITA 100.00, the significant increase in bandwidth with the VITA 100.30 connectors is apparent and many of the limitations of OpenVPX, especially in the 3U form factor, are removed.  The addition of the 4U form factor provides additional board space and I/O for applications which are constrained in 3U size.

The next generation VITA 100 connectors were developed to a set of requirements defined within VITA by industry leaders and will enable new system capabilities for many years to come.