Rugged and rackmount systems

Rugged systems Rackmount systems Systems customization Solution example

REFLEX CES can support you during all phases of your rugged system development (from prototype to full mass production), as:

Full system development: boards, mechanical design, transport containers, etc.
REFLEX CES is able to support you on your custom development by involving all internal development capabilities: hardware, mechanical design, thermal, software, firmware.
COTS boards integration in an existing rugged system, or development of a custom mechanical design.
Custom boards development for harsh environment. We can support you during the qualification phase and system integration. REFLEX CES is able to design complex FPGA-based boards (Intel® and Xilinx®) by offering the most suitable:
- form factor (CompactPCI, VPX, etc)
- thermal solution (passive heat dissipation, heatpipe, conduction cooled, etc)
- mechanical and environmental qualification (CE marking, specific environmental qualification (STANAG), tropicalization, etc)

Rugged systems

Custom 3U VPX board with cold conduction
(RF application, VPX Form factor, Wedglock, cold conduction)

Rugged systems 2

Full Custom Rugged system (board and mechanical)
(Aircraft Military Application, Rigid-Flex design, MIL STD Qualification – EMI and vibration)

RUGGED FEATURES Highlight

Environment
- Hardening: Development of embedded systems on military armored vehicles (VAB)
- Tropicalization
- Qualification
- Thermal
- Temperature, Humidity& Altitude
- Vibrations & Shocks
Compactness
- Custom form factor
- VPX
Thermal dissipation
- Active
- Custom passive: VPX cold conduction, heatpipe, skiving, extrusion processing

To address these requirements, REFLEX CES works with a complete network of suppliers and partners. This allows us to address technical problems such as:

Mechanical: extrusion processing, folding, laser drilling, 3D prototyping, injection, skiving, heat pipe,extrusion profile
Material: aluminum, copper, plasturgy
Harsh environmental conditions: temperature, vibration, …

REFLEX CES has the internal engineering skills to follow and specify those different mechanical developments and qualification plan.

Typical areas of applications:

RF (HF, VUHF, GPS, WIFI)
high-speed communication links (up to 100G/s)

Targeted markets:

Military and defense
Networking acceleration
HPC
Industrial

Our systems are submitted for environmental qualifications,including for example:

Environmental qualifications	Norms
Climatic tests	IP65, Stanag 4370 AECTP230 Ed 3
Vibration and shock tests	JESD N°22B103B ; VITA47-Vibration V3 Choc OS2 MIL-STD-810F; AECTP 400, METHOD 414
Electromagnetic fieldresistance	MIL-STD-461
CE markings (electrical safety, EMC)	Norms EN 60950, IEC 61010, IEC 60950, EN 55031, EN 61000, etc
FCC/CSA markings (electrical safety, EMC)	FCC part15, NMB / ICES-003
CB Scheme markings
Risk assessment study/Reliability (FMEA, MTBF)	FIDES /Telcordia SR-332 issue 3 standard
Transport licence	UN38.3 for battery transportation

REFLEX CES is able to handle all or parts of your project. We support you from specification to design, tests, qualification and industrialization.
Do not hesitate to contact us regarding your project.

REFLEX CES is able to support you on your custom development by involving all internal development capabilities: hardware, mechanical design, thermal, software, firmware. We offer you a concrete support customer service:

Full system development: boards, mechanical design, etc.
COTS boards integration in an existing system, or development of a custom mechanical design.
Custom boards development. We can support you during the qualification phase and system integration. REFLEX CES is able to design complex FPGA-based boards (Intel® and Xilinx®)

Example: Full system development by REFLEX CES.

Acquisition 1

An acquisition unit was based on a Stratix® 10 FPGA and Xeon CPU

Acquisition 2

A storage unit was based on a Xeon® CPU and NVMe disks, QSFP+ (40Gb Ethernet)

RACK-MOUNTED FEATURES Highlight

Compactness:
- Standard form factor : 19 inches (1U, 2U, 4U…)
- PCIe
- Compact PCI
- Custom form factor
Thermal dissipation:
- Active
- Custom passive
Space constraints:
- Custom electronic boards
- Custom mechanic

Targeted markets :

HPC
Data processing
AI

Our systems are submitted for environmental qualifications, including for example:

Environmental qualifications	Norms
Climatic tests (pressure, temperature, moisture)	Stanag 4370 AECTP230 Ed 3
CE markings (for Europe):
electricalsafety	Norms IEC 61010
EMC	Norms EN 61000
MTBF (mean time between failures)	FIDES /Telcordia SR-332 issue 3 standard

The main value of a system customization for the customer is to start the project with a commercial off-the-shelf system, in order to reduce development cost and technical risks, improving product Time to Market.

Rackmount Systems

Our Hydra14S server is the perfect example of a customization, based on an off-the-shelf COTS server, customized by REFLEX CES. For more detail, please download our Product specification

Hydra14S

Hydra 14S Server (by REFLEX CES)
(32x 100G Ethernet optical port, 4x Stratix 10 2.8k INTEL FPGA)

Rugged and Embedded Systems

Feasibility phase (customizedmechanical design, thermal design, system architecture and performances capabilities)
COTS boards integration in an off-the-shelf server
CUSTOM boards development and integration in an off-the-shelf server

Systemcusto1

Rugged and embedded PC
(modified by REFLEX CES to integrate custom/COTS boards)

Customization System

Embedded PC
(modified by REFLEX CES to integrate custom/COTS boards : FPGA, NVME, ..)

After minor or major changes of these OEM systems (PC, servers), our “MOTS” systems are submitted for environmental qualifications (MTBF, CE, FCC, CSA marking for example).

Capitalizing on its 20 years expertise in design and development of complex FPGA-based systems, REFLEX CES can guide you through the definition, achievement and support of a product range.

Thus, REFLEX CES can build a strong and privileged partnership with its customers, to ease access to the latest technologies while ensuring the firmware’s as well as software’s backwards compatibility.

For example, REFLEX CES has developed for a major player in the France defense market, a full range of products developed on custom and Intel® FPGA-based PCI Express boards.

REFLEX CES is able to handle the development of mid-to-highly complex boards and systems, regarding the following areas of expertise:

Custom chassis,
Power and supervision management Electronical boards,
Processing Electronical boards, based on FPGA technologies (on this example, Stratix® IV, and migration to Arria® 10)
Firmware developments,
Software developments (driver, Application Programming Interface API)

Thanks to a strong development and integration expertise, REFLEX CES has successfully made evolve this product over 10 years. Different applications have been covered, while following the FPGA technologies evolution, and keeping a constant software perimeter:

Mechanical evolution, to support customer’s new integration requirements.
Evolution of size, hardening, form factor, etc.
- 4U form factor server: 4U 19 inches, long
- 3U and 2U form factors servers: 3U 19 inches, short & 2U compact
- 4U VPX form factor server: VPX 4U, rugged, mechanical environment, integration density
Electronical evolution: Implementation of a new FPGA family (Stratix® IV to Arria® 10) for a power consumption and integration gain: for the same application, we observe a 92% volume gain over 10 years.

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Rugged and rackmount systems