General Micro Systems redefines military electronic system architectures with X9 Spider
Summary
“By breaking the outdated and needlessly expensive, centralised ATR-style board-and-chassis paradigm into Thunderbolt technology-connected distributed compute modules, the X9 Spider family gives designers ruggedised, as-needed capabilities to solve any compute problem in any environment – from the smallest enclosure to the largest C5ISR system.” Rugged X9 Spider modules are small and modular, plug-and-play, and emphasise flexibility over ATR chassis’ physical and electrical constraints. Built for limitless expandability, the X9 Spider family is based on new, patent-pending mechanical features that allow devices to stack and connect together electrically, physically and thermally but at light speed (literally) with minimal signal bottlenecks. “X9 Spider’s interoperability not only lowers acquisition costs, but it enables modernisation and upgrade programs to move past restrictive single-box architectures like VME and OpenVPX and instead uses plug-and-play standards like Thunderbolt 4, 100Gigabit Ethernet and USB4 that are deployable anywhere on the platform,” Sharfi said. “This decentralises computing, power distribution, and heat dissipation while improving fault tolerance through redundancy or merely by physically separating critical functions. These capabilities required new mechanical and electrical innovations to achieve a truly modular, distributed and scalable system that designers will love.” The GMS X9 architecture includes 22 patents either filed for or granted.