First Public Demonstration of a SOSA-Aligned 100GbE VPX Switch

As you may have seen recently on social media and myriad industry news sites there was some very exciting technology demonstrated at the Tri-Service Open Architecture Interoperability Demonstration (TSOA-ID) on January 29 at Georgia Tech Research Institute.

TSOA-ID was the first time the three branches of United States Armed Services (Army, Navy and Air Force) were brought together with standards organisations including HOST, SOSA, CMOSS and VITA working alongside leading industry partners like Annapolis Micro Systems and Leonardo DRS to demonstrate the ease of interoperability of rugged embedded hardware and software modules.

WILDSTAR 6E10 6U VPX Switch operating in Air Force chassis
TSOA-ID Dry Run in December 2019

TSOA-ID featured the very first public demonstration of a SOSA™-aligned 100Gb Ethernet-capable VPX switch and processing board. The next-generation WILDSTAR™ 100GbE 6E10 6U OpenVPX Switch and 6XB2 6U OpenVPX FPGA module from our partners at Annapolis featured in a live conformance and interoperability demo running within a US Air Force chassis.


Alongside the 100GbE demo, Annapolis also showcased the SOSA-aligned WILDSTAR 6XBU 6U OpenVPX FPGA Processing Board, which offers ultra-wide bandwidth digitisation and processing in a single 6U VPX board. It also delivers remarkable instantaneous bandwidth: 32 GHz receive and 24 GHz transmit.

Annapolis high-performance products can be used in a wide range of applications, including advanced HPC, ISR, and multi-function EW applications, such as phased array radar, cybersecurity network processing, DRFM, beamforming, sensor processing, wireless communication, and radar signal processing.

See more Annapolis Products

SOSA - Sensor Open System Architecture for C4ISR Applications

If you haven’t heard about SOSA, you’re probably not the only one, but it’s big news for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems.

SOSA, or the Sensor Open System Architecture, is a collaboration between government and industry to establish guidelines for C4ISR systems. The United States is currently spearheading SOSA development, but the intention is to encourage the use of SOSA in both government and commercial markets across the world.

Using OpenVPX as its framework, SOSA will ensure improved SWaP-C optimisation, extensive reconfiguration options and rapid technology upgrades within a wide range of applications. The fundamental objective is to give designers maximum flexibility in the initial selection of subsystems that provide sensor data collection, processing, exploitation, communication, and related functions over the full life cycle of the C4ISR system.

Annapolis Micro Systems was an early adopter of the modular open standards model for COTS product development, and is a dedicated SOSA contributor and member.


The 3XBM from Annapolis is SOSA-aligned and VITA 65-compliant.

These boards provide either one Kintex® UltraScale™ XCKU115 or Virtex® UltraScale+™ XCVU5P/XCVU7P FPGA with up to 10 GB of DDR4 DRAM, providing up to 40 GB/s of DRAM bandwidth. WM3XBM - Find Out More

A WFMC+ mezzanine I/O site with stacking support is included, alongside an on-board Zynq Quad ARM CPU and 1Gb Ethernet Switch. High-bandwidth backplane connectivity is enabled by MULTIGIG RT3 interconnects, which deliver 100Gb per Fat Pipe. The new high-density RT3 boosts VPX backplane speeds to a remarkable 25 Gbaud, without sacrificing signal integrity.

For more information please contact the Sarsen Technology Engineering Team who can answer questions about SOSA, Annapolis and any of our other high performance embedded hardware.

Intel Releases Xeon D Processor Family

Intel has just unveiled a new range of Xeon brand processors. The new processor family, known as Xeon D, are a series of system-on-chip server processors designed specifically for blade and high density server systems.

Intel rarely announce new integrated platforms, and the Xeon D has caused a bit of excitement in the industry. Hailed as the previously unoccupied middle ground between Xeon E3 and Atom SoCs, the Xeon D takes the best bits of both and slots neatly into the market for the low-end server market, prioritising efficiency and networking.
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Xeon D, also known as Broadwell-DE, combines up to eight high performance Broadwell desktop cores and the PCH onto a single die, reducing both down to 14 nm for power consumption/die area. Dual integrated 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports natively support XAUI/KX4/KR to further enhance I/O capabilities, while reducing SWaP-C concerns. 24 PCI Express (PCIe) 3.0 lanes, eight PCIe 2.0 lanes, six SATA 6 Gb/s ports, four USB 3.0 ports, and four USB 2.0 ports provide many options for system expansion, connectivity, and storage. In addition to multiple 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports, the Xeon® D employs a Non-Transparent Bridge for PCIe to enable advanced connectivity options for multiprocessor systems.
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Alongside the announcement from Intel, Extreme Engineering Solutions, Inc. (X-ES) has introduced the XPedite7670 3U OpenVPX™ REDI single board computer module and its 6U VPX companion, the XCalibur4640, both based on the Intel® Xeon® D (formerly Broadwell-DE) processor family.

The XPedite7670 is a high-performance, 3U OpenVPX™ REDI, single board computer with support for up to 8 GB of DDR3-1600 ECC SDRAM. The XCalibur4640 extends the XPedite7670's functionality to a 6U VPX form factor with expanded capabilities. System memory capacity increases to 16 GB of DDR3-1600 ECC SDRAM and local storage increases to 128 GB of SLC NAND flash.

For more information on these brand new boards please contact the Sarsen Technology team on 01672 511166, or send us an email.