COTS can be PCIe and 10G Ethernet

Sometimes, we can get a skewed view of what constitutes COTS products for the military-aerospace market. There is one opinion that insists that real ruggedization equals VPX (is this a macho cry?), or that tough-enough Defense Department networks already have migrated to 40G or 100G backbones. I come down on the side of a diversity of backplanes and a diversity of network speeds (heck, 100-Mbit Ethernet may be appropriate for some types of ruggedized space-based or tactical nets).

Hence, the new 10-Gbit Ethernet PCI Express card from Nallatech seems the right product at the right time. The company announced that its PCIe-180 shipped to its first customer in January.  The PCIe-180 uses two Virtex-5 devices, the LX155 and LX50T, with the 155 intended for user configurability, while the 50T links the FPGA directly to a 10G Ethernet MAC. Nallatech is promoting the board as a coprocessor tied to a host, optimized for signals intelligence, network security, or specialized algorithms such as imagery intelligence.

It’s fair to ask whether the programmable portion might better have been implemented on a mezzanine card. And I’ll admit that some buses touted for the COTS world, like MicroTCA, have been less than stellar in acceptance. But it still seems as though PCIe has a bright future in embedded mil-aero, particularly in the half-length, half-height form factor used in the PCIe-180.