Liquid cooling test and development platform enables rapid prototyping and testing

Elma Electronic’s Liquid Flow Through (LFT) VITA 48.4 modular test and development chassis facilitates rapid prototyping and testing of up to six 6U OpenVPX plug-in cards (PICs) with power densities of 200W or more.

The self-contained platform is created for proof-of-concept testing and development tasks in a variety of mission-critical aerospace and defence environments. Specific applications include sensor payloads, electronic warfare, C5ISR, navigation systems and target tracking and display.

The system’s high-performance power and ground backplane provides dependable power and signal routing across all six PIC slots through the utility plane. Its 10Gbps data rate permits the system to keep pace with the increased processing of high-throughput applications.

Ram Rajan, senior VP of Engineering of Elma, noted, “As computing densities increase, liquid cooling provides the thermal management needed in today’s embedded systems, where traditional methods may not hold up. This new development platform gives system designers the confidence to test applications for deployment in a number of extreme environments with extended heat profiles.”

The new development platform enables access to the plug-in cards through the open side frame design. Support for rear transition IO across all slots ensures rapid system configuration for bench-top test and debugging.

Designed for high-performance thermal management via integrated liquid cooling channels, the platform is ready for operation and integration into liquid-cooled test environments and works with LFT PICs from all major manufacturers. An external coolant distribution unit (CDU) is needed to operate the liquid flow through cooling.

The unit comes with an internal 1400W power supply, and the internal VITA 46.11 chassis manager monitors voltages and temperature status. Several customisation options are available upon request.