C878 Xeon D-based SBC alleviates processing bottlenecks

13th May 2020

Alex Lynn

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Aitech has released its latest security-enabled SBC alleviates bottlenecks and features up to 16 lanes of PCIe to handle increased data processing requirements, while protecting the board from data attacks and cyber threats. The new C878 is a 3U VPX board that provides Intel Xeon D level processing in a rugged, industry-standard form factor.

Equipped with double the Gen3 PCIe Data Plane lanes as Aitech’s C877, the rugged SBC was specifically designed using a modern, high-bandwidth bus architecture and can accommodate an increased amount of backplane traffic. This makes it ideal for compute-intensive mission critical applications found in harsh environments.

Another variation over the C877 is that, instead of supporting an XMC site, the new SBC includes a GPU to provide a more intuitive interface via a 128-bit 2D graphics engine. These HMI capabilities allow the user to interact and control the application graphically or display pertinent data/video or other info on a monitor/screen. The hardware video decoder in the GPU supports many popular video outputs, including MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VC-1, H.264 MVC/AVS+ and JPEG/MJPEG.

The C878 uses the same cybersecurity architecture as the C877—Aitech’s proprietary AiSecure—to provide secure transmission of sensitive data. Intel security includes Trusted Platform and Secure Boot as well as a BIOS Guard based on TXT TPM 2.0 and BIOS security. The onboard SATA SSD, up to 1 TB, supports write protection, secure and quick erase in addition to disk data encryption using AES 256 keys. A battery-backed tamper detection signal ensures system level protection.

Standard cybersecurity features are enhanced by an optional, onboard Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ FPGA that offers a variety of inherent protection tools as well as options for customizable security features and data encryption.

A variety of onboard I/O interfaces, including USB 3.0/2.0, SATA III, PCIe Gen2, serial, discrete, DVI out and Ethernet, as well as custom I/O via the FPGA, are available on the OpenVPX-based SBC. The board also offers up to 32 GB of DDR4 SDRAM with ECC at 2133 MT/s to meet storage requirements.

The C878 comes in conduction- and air-cooled versions and features several board resources, such as watchdog timers, a real-time clock, temperature sensors, an elapsed time recorder and VITA 46.11 Tier 1 and Tier 2 IPMI. Supported operating systems are Windows, WindRiver VxWorks and Linux.