Rugged Compact PC from Aitech Improves Reliable, High Performance Computing in Harsh Environments

Chatsworth, Calif. December 2014 – Aitech Defense Systems Inc., a pioneer in true embedded and mission critical computing technologies for environmentally-demanding, mission-critical applications, now offers the extremely rugged and compact A171 computing system that ensures high computing performance under highly adverse conditions.

An environmentally-sealed (IP65) aluminum enclosure that withstands exceptional shock and vibration houses the A171’s Intel Core i7 processor board along with a highly integrated power interface board. The two boards are hard-mounted to the interior of the front panel, which enables the front panel’s integrated heat sink to provide high efficiency cooling of the system’s higher power components for increased system reliability.

This rugged architecture and high processing combines with a very modest power consumption of 40 W, enabling the new rugged compact PC (RCP) to reliably perform in a wide variety of harsh military air and ground applications.

Equipped with up to 4 GB DDR3 SDRAM with ECC at 1,066 MHz as well as 64 GB of SATA Flash (SSD) and dual-redundant 4 MB of BIOS Flash, the new RCP offers extensive volatile and non-volatile memory resources.

The A171 also offers an impressive number of I/O options, while weighing less than 5.5 lbs (2.5 kg) and measuring only 10″ x 7″ x 1.7″ (260 mm x 180 mm x 45.2 mm). I/O includes two ports each of Gigabit Ethernet, Fast Ethernet and USB 2.0 as well as four UART ports and eight discrete I/O lines, all of which feature on-board filtering. Two optional CANbus controllers are also available.

The front panel’s exterior features two MIL-C-38999 connectors that are soldered directly to the power interface board for added reliability. A cable set with mating, industry-standard PC connectors is also available to ease integration and reduce start-up time and costs. Simply plug in a 28 VDC power source, connect to a monitor, keyboard and mouse, and the A171 is up and running, right out of the box.

The Core i7 platform, with Intel’s Hyperthreading Technology, enables application developers to take full advantage of the dual-core/four thread parallel processing capabilities, resulting in high power processing with low power consumption.

This Intel platform also offers large, integrated on-chip L1 and L2 caches as well as a shared L3 cache with a companion PCH I/O controller hub. The integrated 2D/3D graphics controller supports graphics and video processing and provides RGBHV and DVI output channels.

Additional system resources include two temperature sensors and an avionics windowed watchdog timer to monitor system operation and critical software functions. Operating temperature is -40°C to +71°C (-40°F to +160°F).

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