Kontron chassis monitoring board CMB for VME and VPX systems

The chassis monitoring board CMB (chassis monitoring board) is a unified solution for VPX and VME systems to streamline system monitoring and management of rugged applications.

It centralises out-of-band monitoring and management of installed boards and relevant system parameters such as temperature, airflow and power supply in COTS systems with high demands on reliability, availability and ruggedness.

Instead of relying solely on chipset and firmware implemented management features, the device uses additional monitoring hardware that helps to optimise system availability, since a reset or system crash does not influence the monitoring and management.

Additionally, the board is designed for multi-board and multi-vendor environments, as it is based on common interface technology such as I²C and GPIOs to provide out-of-band chassis management and monitoring functionality.

Its high MTBF, according to the MIL-HDBK217F-2 standard, means it is suitable for a wide range of environments from ground benign conditions (603,005 h at 25°C) to demanding air rotary wing applications (20,485 h at 55°C).

Its compact footprint and low power requirements (\<1 W) simplify system development for space-restricted applications. System designers can use the chassis monitoring board to monitor and control up to eight power modules, eight temperature sensors and eight fans in addition to out-of-band monitoring and management of up to eight installed VME or VPX boards.

Beyond monitoring, the board can remotely power up/down and reset boards, fans and power supplies. This enables additional functionality such as variable computing capacity to allow minimal power consumption while the system operates in surveillance mode.