FPGA-based servers and systems

Known for its expertise in analog and hardened systems, reflex ces has become a trusted, long-term partner for major industrial companies. We can offer rugged and rackmount systems, as well as fully customized systems, according to your needs.

reflex ces is here to support you during all phases of your rugged system development, from the prototype to full mass production, with:

  • Full system development: boards, mechanical design, transport containers, etc.
    reflex ces can help with your custom development by incorporating all internal development capabilities: hardware, mechanical design, thermal, software, firmware.
  • Integrating COTS boards in an existing rugged system, or developing a custom mechanical design.
  • Developing custom boards for harsh environments. We can help you with the qualification phase and in system integration. reflex ces is able to design complex FPGA-based boards (Intel® and AMD) by offering the most suitable:
    • form factor (CompactPCI, VPX, etc.)
    • thermal solution (passive heat dissipation, heat pipe, conduction cooled, etc.)
    • mechanical and environmental qualification (CE marking, specific environmental qualification (STANAG), tropicalization, etc.)

 

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

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 an extensive network of suppliers and partners. This means we can tackle technical problems such as:

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

 

reflex ces has the internal engineering skills to provide all types of mechanical development and specify qualification plans.

Typical applications areas:

  • RF (HF, VUHF, GPS, WIFI)
  • High-speed communication links (up to 100Gb/s)

Targeted markets:

  • Military and defense
  • Networking acceleration
  • HPC
  • Industry

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 can handle all or part of your project. We support you from the specification stage through to design, tests, qualification and industrialization.

Get in touch and tell us about your project.

 

reflex ces can help with your custom development by incorporating all internal development capabilities: hardware, mechanical design, thermal, software, firmware. We offer unmatched customer service support:

  • Full system development: boards, mechanical design, etc.
  • COTS board integration in an existing system, or development of a custom mechanical design.
  • Custom board development. We can help you with the qualification phase and in system integration. reflex ces is able to design complex FPGA-based boards (Intel® and AMD)

 

  • Example: Full system development by reflex ces.

 

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

 

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

 

reflex ces can handle all or part of your project. We support you from the specification stage through to design, tests, qualification and industrialization.

Get in touch and tell us about your project.

reflex ces has been developing and marketing complex and custom mechanical systems for more than 20 years.

reflex ces can also provide expertise regarding COTS or custom board integration on servers or PCs for large market players such as DELL (R230, R640, R740, T640, R940xa, C4140, etc.), HPE (DL380), and Supermicro (1019, 1029),  but also on specific rugged and embedded PC.

 

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

 

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

According to your needs, integrating our Intel® and AMD FPGA PCI Express boards (FH_FL, HH-HL, etc.) may require mechanical adaptation of some server items. These changes are then manufactured by one of our partners.

Once these modifications and adaptations are complete, REFLEX CES can offer submission for environmental qualifications (CE, FCC, CSA, etc., according to your needs).

Please contact us for any requests regarding your board’s integration.

Drawing on our 20 years of expertise in designing and developing complex FPGA-based systems, reflex ces can guide you as you define, create and build a product range.

reflex ces builds strong, successful partnerships with its customers, providing access to the latest technologies while ensuring backward compatibility for firmware and software.

For example, reflex ces has developed a full range of products using custom and Intel® FPGA-based PCI Express boards for a major defense company in France.

reflex ces can develop moderate to highly complex boards and systems, given its expertise in:

  • Custom chassis
  • Power and supervision management electronic boards
  • Processing electronic boards based on FPGA technologies (in this example, Stratix® IV and migration to Arria® 10)
  • Firmware development
  • Software development (driver, application programming interface (API))

Thanks to its expertise in development and integration, reflex ces has continued to upgrade this product over 10 years. We cover various applications and have released new products that keep up with the FPGA technology revolution while maintaining the same software:

  • Mechanical evolution to support our customers’ new integration requirements.
  • Evolution in size, hardening, form factor, etc.
    • 4U form factor server: 19″ 4U
    • 3U and 2U form factors servers: 19″ 3U, short, compact 2U
    • 4U VPX form factor server: VPX 4U, rugged, mechanical environment, integration density

 

  • Electronic evolution: Implementation of a new FPGA family (Stratix® IV to Arria® 10) to improve power consumption and integration. The required footprint for the same application was reduced by 92% over 10 years.

evolution of a complete reflex ces range of products

servers & systems benefits

Based on your needs, we can develop our rugged and rackmount systems for harsh environments, small spaces, and with active or custom passive thermal dissipation. We provide our expertise for full system development as well as for COTS board integration with or without custom board development.

All bays, server racks, and rack rails are configurable according to your needs.

reflex ces offers pre-optimized on-the-shelf servers, such as our Hydra 14S. Because this FPGA server is already configured and programmed, it simplifies development and offers quick deployment and reduced time to market.

reflex ces also offers OEM server integration, to integrate COTS or custom boards on key market players’ servers or PCs. This enables fast development thanks to high product availability, meaning projects are quickly up and running.

Customization is also possible in line with your business needs, to achieve the high performance required for your final application and end users. Customization can include designing FPGA and boards, plus software design and development, system and mechanical design, power supply and qualification.

The real strength of our servers and systems is the use of FPGAs (field programmable gate array) in our development boards, often coupled with a CPU.

 

servers & systems specifications

Our servers and systems are fully programmable and configurable according to customer needs.

reflex ces specially designs rugged systems and rugged computers to meet all your environmental requirements, such as hardening, tropicalization, specific qualification, thermal issues, temperature, humidity and altitude, and vibrations and shocks.

Our rack-mountable systems are created to fit into limited rack spaces and specific rack enclosures with a restricted footprint. We embed power distribution within the rack-mount system.

FPGA boards can be developed with either AMD FPGAs or Intel FPGAs.

Our sales team is available to advise you on the best solution—contact us at sales@reflexces.com

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