ESD Electronics Ensures VMEbus Technology Remains State of the Art with Long-term Availability

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VMEbus refers to a multi-master bus system for industrial controls in 19" racks. With our many years of experience with VMEbus systems, we continuously ensure that our CPU and IO boards are adapted, therefore kept at state of the art, and the operations of long-serving installations of our customers can be guaranteed at reasonable costs. While other manufacturers are discontinuing their production of VME products, we have launched new future-proof CPU and IO boards. One requirement was that the new boards should also be compatible with the discontinued products of other market players. This allows many systems developed over a long period of time to continue to be operated in the future.

Due to its exceptionally high flexibility, the VMEbus is predestined for the operation of computer systems under real-time conditions and in harsh industrial environments such as railway engineering and maritime environments and military applications.

The VMEbus is primarily used in applications with increased safety and reliability requirements, such as the Transrapid, the International Space Station, or the European navigation system Galileo. A strong driver for the VMEbus as a reliable and long-term system is the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known as CERN. It continues to rely on VMEbus-based systems to control its facilities.

We develop and manufacture VMEbus boards according to customer specifications for individual applications. Our customers benefit from our many years of experience with VMEbus systems. For discontinued boards, also from other manufacturers, we offer replicas so that systems designed for the long term can continue to be operated reliably.

ESD's portfolio includes VME boards such as the VME-CPU/T10 with reliable PowerPC architecture. Mezzanine cards have been developed to extend the VMEbus via carriers. Particularly worth mentioning are the XMC-CPU/Zulu with FPGA-SoC or the PMC-CAN/402 as a high-performance CAN interface.

As part of the compatible follow-up development, we have generated the new VME-DIO32 as an easy-to-use IO card with 32 digital inputs and 32 outputs for industrial use in two versions to ensure long-term availability and bring our old VME-DPIO32 up to date with the latest technology.