Bandwidth booster

Designers of board level systems have in many respects the same objectives as those working with other technologies. They want more performance for their processors, they want more and faster interconnects and they want all that in smaller packages. But, unlike those designers in other market sectors, there is also the need in many instances to maintain compatibility with legacy systems. So those developing standards to cater for these needs are often forced to walk a technology tightrope. The legacy technology in the backplane and board world is VME and an enormous number of systems based on the technology are still in use today – particularly in military applications. But it’s users such as the military who are requiring developers to push the envelope. These requirements have seen the emergence of a new market sector called, depending upon who you talk to, something like critical embedded systems. Critical embedded systems can be characterised in a number of ways but, typically, they encompass increasing use of fpgas and more high speed serial interconnects.