Curtiss-Wright Debuts Safety Certifiable 3U VPX Graphics Modules for Avionics

Curtiss-Wright Debuts Safety Certifiable 3U VPX Graphics Modules for Avionics

New VPX3-717 and VPX3-719 graphics cards feature AMD Radeon E8860 GPU, DO-254 DAL C and DO-178C DAL A safety certifiable data artifacts and 15+ year availability

ASHBURN, Va. – NOVEMBER 3, 2016 – Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solutions division announced that it has expanded its portfolio of DO-254 / DO-178C safety certifiable COTS products with the introduction of two new rugged 3U VPX high performance graphics processor modules. Based on AMD’s latest embedded Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), the Radeon E8860, both of these multi-head graphics cards support the long lifecycle availability required for defense and aerospace programs. Through the use of a suite of CoreAVI® software drivers and supported by the embedded industry’s longest component supply program, availability for VPX3-717 and VPX3-719 module hardware and software is ensured for 15+ years. Designed for use in safety certifiable applications, these sizes, weight, power and cost (SWaP-C)-optimized modules were developed to meet DO-254 DAL C and DO-178C DAL A certification. DO-254 and DO-178C certification artifact kits, available from Curtiss-Wright, ease platform certification, speed time to market, and significantly reduce the cost and risk of developing safety certifiable electronics subsystems for commercial and military aviation platforms.

“We are very excited to announce these new safety certifiable rugged graphics cards,” said Lynn Bamford, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Defense Solutions division. “These SWaP optimized 3U VPX graphics engines enable system designers to speed the design of DO-254/DO-178B safety certifiable avionics systems, eliminating the high cost of custom solutions. Even better, they feature unmatched 15+ year availability for hardware and software, a true boon for long lifecycle aerospace and defense programs.”

About the VPX3-719: Built-in HD-SDI Video Capture and Output Format Conversion

The VPX3-719 is ideal for applications that require video capture and HD-SDI video interfaces. It supports extremely low latency video capture, graphics generation and overlay, and display output conversion. The card’s Radeon GPU is supported with up to six independent and simultaneous graphics outputs selectable from 4x DVI, 2x HD-SDI, and 2x analog RGBHV or STANAG interfaces. The VPX3-719 provides 2 GB of dedicated video memory, and a hardware accelerated video compression encoder and decoder. It features built-in video capture and format conversion and provides two channels of video capture from HD-SDI, analog RGBHV, or STANAG sources. The video data is transferred directly to processor or GPU memory.

About the VPX3-717: XMC Expansion Site Delivers System Flexibility

The VPX3-717 provides system designers with a higher level of architecture flexibility. Unlike the VPX3-719, it provides an on-module XMC mezzanine expansion site, which can be configured with a wide variety of XMC card types. The card can also be configured with a Power Architecture®, Intel® or ARM®-based processor XMC single board computer (SBC) enabling single-slot graphics plus SBC solutions. I/O support includes six independent DVI outputs, two of which can also be configured to support a dual-link DVI port for higher resolutions. One channel of analog RGBHV is also supported.

Software Support

Graphics software API support includes OpenGL®1.2 and OpenGL ES 2.0 for embedded applications, and OpenGL SC 1.0.1 and OpenGL SC 2.0 designed for safety critical and certifiable applications. Codec support for MPEG2 and H.264 encode and decode functionality is also offered.

Software support for both graphics modules includes RTOS driver support for Power Architecture, Intel, and ARM VPX and XMC processor modules. Operating environment support includes Linux, Wind River® VxWorks®, Green Hills Software INTEGRITY®, Lynx Software Technologies LynxOS® and Microsoft® Windows®.

 

About Curtiss-Wright Corporation

Curtiss-Wright Corporation is a global innovative company that delivers highly engineered, critical function products and services to the commercial, industrial, defense and energy markets.  Building on the heritage of Glenn Curtiss and the Wright brothers, Curtiss-Wright has a long tradition of providing reliable solutions through trusted customer relationships. The company employs approximately 8,400 people worldwide.  For more information, visit www.curtisswright.com.

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John Wranovics

John Wranovics

Director of Public Relations

John Wranovics has over thirty years of experience in managing media relations and the promotion of high technology products. He has been with Curtiss-Wright since 2003. He has a degree in English Literature from the University of California, Berkeley.