By John Keller
The new generation of high-speed fabric data backplanes represent a fundamental paradigm shift in technology that not only offers dramatic increases in data bandwidth, but also may be as significant as the shift from analog to digital signals.
These new backplanes that move data according to standards such as PCI Express, VITA 41, PICMG 2.16, and PICMG 3.0 offer to move data within systems and subsystems at gigabit speeds, rather than today’s megabit bandwidths, and in the near future may open the way to widespread applications that move data between system components at terabit speeds.
Fast fabric backplanes are the next technological step beyond parallel databus approaches. Fabrics move data at blindingly fast speeds, yet move bits of data serially, rather than in parallel like legacy VME and PCI databuses.
The ability to move data within systems and subsystems at gigabit and terabit ranges offers to enable a broad new range of capabilities in data-intensive applications like radar signal processing, image processing and analysis, and battlefield situational awareness.
Some of the most promising high-speed fabric backplanes today offer fabrics such as Ethernet, VXS Switch Fabric, Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA), StarFabric, PCI Express, and RapidIO.
On the horizon is one of the most anticipated new fabrics, the VPX fabric of the emerging VITA 46 databus standard.
These backplanes, which move data quickly among printed-circuit boards in a chassis, offer speed where designers need it most and will often help engineers accommodate new and legacy technologies in the same system.
Speeds of the new crop of fast fabric backplanes range from a few gigabits per second to as fast as 2.5 terabits per second, with faster speeds promised for the future, depending on system configurations, topologies, data lane widths, and other variables.
Not only is the ever-increasing need for data throughput speed driving applications of fabric backplanes, but perhaps more important, the need to fit massive amounts of processing power into tiny spaces is uncovering needs for fabric backplanes.
The booming industry in unmanned vehicles-particularly unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is expected to be a major technology driver where high-speed fabric backplanes are concerned.
UAVs in the future will be expected to perform a broad range of sophisticated surveillance and reconnaissance tasks, as well as perform complex on-the-move communications switching and deliver precision weapons on target.
In all these applications, the ability to move data quickly will be paramount. Reconnaissance and surveillance will drive the need for processing data from radar, infrared, and visible-light cameras. Communications switching requires speed to keep messages moving. Likewise, precise targeting requires UAVs to be able to operate autonomously, choose weapons payloads, and discern real targets from decoys.
“There are growing requirements for applications where there is a lack of space,” says Justin Moll, director of marketing for high-speed fabric specialist Elma Bustronic in Fremont, Calif.
“Space and weight are getting smaller, so there needs to be more functionality in less space,” Moll says. “UAVs need to be lightweight and small, so a mesh VXS or VITA 46 backplanes are very good fits there. They will need a lot of processing power in a very small space.”
Moll also points to the need to upgrade existing manned and unmanned systems with the latest processing power, and to add capabilities to existing platforms to keep them effective in the field for long periods.
Many choices in high-speed fabric backplanes are available today, with more companies and products joining the market all the time. Here are some of the most influential products and suppliers.
Click here to download a .PDF of high-speed serial fabric backplanes
