New SOSA-Aligned FPGA PIC Module for Tactical Sensor Processing Applications

Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solutions Division is releasing a new high-performance SOSA-aligned 3U VPX FPGA plug-in-card (PIC) module, the VPX3-536 Adaptable Processor. 

The VPX3-536, the newest addition to Curtiss-Wright’s Fabric100™ ecosystem of 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE)/PCIe Gen 4 system modules, combines an AI-enabled accelerated compute architecture, dual 400G high-speed crypto engines, and up to 28 high-speed backplane fiber optic links. 

The new module is designed for use in demanding sensor processing applications, such as latency-sensitive radar, electronic warfare, and SIGINT digital signal processing (DSP).

The VPX3-536 is a size, weight, and power (SWaP) optimized which can securely and simultaneously ingest, process, and egress up to 784 Gbps of optical sensor or Ethernet data over the system backplane (100 GbE/Serial/Aurora interfaces) using high-density, high-performance VITA 66.5 interfaces (28 lanes/full-duplex/28 Gbps).

The flexible, user-programmable board features AMD’s highest performance heterogeneous Adaptive Compute Acceleration Platform (ACAP) architecture. The AMD Versal™ Premium VP2502 Adaptive System-on-Chip (SoC) integrates a large FPGA array (3.7M logic cells), two dual-core Arm® processors, and powerful DSP engines (7,392 slice) to eliminate the need for a daughtercard or a discrete processor card to manage it. 

This Versal device provides 472 Adaptive Intelligence Engines (157 TOPS) to support AI, Machine Learning (ML), and 5G signal processing. Overall application performance can reportedly be enhanced by splitting signal processing workloads between the board’s DSP and AI engines. The module’s built-in crypto engine supports line-rate MACSec, IPSec and bulk encryption.

The module’s AMD (formerly Xilinx) Versal Premium ASoC device enables users to leverage and protect their use of Xilinx architecture solutions. With its low latency Network on Chip (NoC) and powerful multi-core Arm processor architecture, the VPX3-536 can serve as a standalone, single-slot ‘system on a board’ running the PetaLinux operating system.

It can also be used as a co-processing resource in multi-board embedded VPX systems with other system elements such as Curtiss-Wright’s CHAMP-XD3 Intel® processor and Fabric100 VPX3-1262 Intel processor and VPX3-6816 Network Switch modules.

Brian Perry, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Curtiss-Wright Defense Solutions Division, commented, “Curtiss-Wright is proud to introduce a truly game-changing heterogeneous architecture FPGA engine that unleashes unmatched compute power and throughput for deployed sensor processing applications. No other SOSA aligned 3U VPX card on the market offers the breakthrough combination of FPGA, CPU, DSP processing, AI acceleration and fiber optic backplane throughput delivered by our new VPX3-536 module.”