Alpha Data delivers new FPGA-based solution for High Altitude environments

Alpha Data, a world-leading company in FPGA-based acceleration, is pleased to announce the first shipment of the System on a Module (SoM) ADM-VPX3-9Z5 product to customers. This rugged, military specification product is designed for challenging environments including High Altitude operations.


25 June 2021, Edinburgh, UK – The Defense-Grade ADM-VPX3-9Z5 has been produced by Alpha Data in collaboration with Xilinx and Texas Instruments, and features Mil-temp range (-55C to +125C) components throughout, for utilization in challenging environments.

The ADM-VPX3-9Z5 delivers high-performance in demanding environments and is especially designed to accelerate digital signal processing — making it particularly useful for remote sensing and Earth Observation.

Built by Alpha Data, the ADM-VPX3-9Z5 is a SOSA-aligned OpenVPX standard System on Module (SoM) that utilizes the Xilinx Defense-Grade Zynq UltraScale+ XQZU19EG FPGA. The board features Mil-temp Enhanced Plastic components from Texas Instruments for System Monitoring, Power and Temperature Sensing. The ADM-VPX3-9Z5 is also compliant with the auxiliary I/O in low-voltage (LVAUX) mode for Single Event Effects (SEE) mitigation.

The ADM-VPX3-9Z5 provides a hard-wearing module in a 3U-VPX form factor, which can be used for everything from early lab development to test, qualification and deployment in rugged environments.

“We built the Defense-Grade ADM-VPX3-9Z5 as an off-the-shelf product designed to military specifications throughout and suitable for all stages of a project, from development to deployment,” elaborated David Miller, managing director of Alpha Data. “The stringent specification of the 9Z5 means the product is intrinsically resilient and rugged — making it the perfect choice for high-altitude sensor processing as well as offering the potential for NewSpace applications.”

The ADM-VPX3-9Z5 is part of Alpha Data’s ever growing product range for “Extreme Environments” – which also includes the new ADA-SDEV-KIT3 Space Development Kit. This builds on the company’s strong technical heritage and the experience of providing products to aerospace primes and research organisations. Alpha Data engineers support customers looking to quickly leverage the very best in off-the-shelf reconfigurable computing.

For More Details
For further product details and ordering options, please visit https://www.alpha-data.com/product/adm-vpx3-9z5/

About Alpha Data
Alpha Data is a world leader in the FPGA-based acceleration boards used in data centres, high-performance computing, and rugged embedded computing worldwide. With bases in both the US and the UK, Alpha Data’s team of highly skilled engineers provide an international customer base with high-reliability, state-of-the-art solutions for computationally intensive applications.

Glossary
FPGA – Field Programmable Gate Array – is a chip consisting of a series of logic blocks which can be modified and configured by the user, and that is fast becoming a vital component of specialized electronic applications and products. With the benefits of being reprogrammable after being deployed in a given setting, and having a low power consumption, FPGAs are very well suited to computationally intensive operations including machine learning tasks and missions in space environments, either for upgrading the hardware or for mitigating cosmic ray radiation damage.

SOSA – Sensor Open Systems Architecture – is an emerging initiative and the SOSA Consortium is creating open system reference architectures applicable to military and commercial sensor systems.

OpenVPX is a system of open standards from VITA (VMEbus International Trade Association).