One of the biggest challenges for VPX system designers is the management of I/O [input/output] to and from the modules. VPX leaves a lot of room for handling all types of I/O and the teams working on the standards have brought some excellent solutions to market.

Collecting shipments data in this sliver of the embedded computing market is difficult at best. Arbuckle presents a brief up date of the changes he has seen in the past year. Amazingly, VME is forecasted to hold strong while VPX is making slow progress. To no surprise, the U.S. defense market is leading the way. He concludes with a brief discussion on key issues that could impact his forecast.

Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology has proven to be invaluable to embedded designers for many years. Often acting as an all-in-one solution, FPGAs negate the need for ASIC [Application-specific integrated circuit] technology and reduce the cost of custom IP algorithms in silicon. 

The intention of the VITA Technologies Hall of Fame is to honor and preserve the remembrance of those people and technologies that have had the greatest influence on the VITA open standards industry. Many others are to come - innovators and influencers, who have made a significant impact on developing, designing, creating the technology, and ferrying the technical specifications into open standards. 

Since the 1994 Perry directive to use COTS [commercial off-the shelf] components, virtually all defense and intelligence organizations have been seeking standards-based solutions for electronic equipment and systems. However, even without that mandate, government customers have come to recognize the commonsense benefits of open standards to take advantage of the latest technology...

Complex embedded computing platforms must scale in performance and capability even faster than ever to stay viable. Optical interconnection is the most scalable technology available to enable quick upgrades with tight size, weight, and performance (SWaP) criteria. 

Most of us are focused on the future roadmaps of our products, but in an industry where the life cycles of computing elements are measured in decades, life cycle management is a curse. Plotkin talks about how changing times need changing strategies. He reminds us that there are ways to effectively manage the long tail of embedded computing products.