Embedded control briefs: VITA, Enea

Developments at organizations active in embedded systems and controls continually make the news. Here are two recent announcements. VITA (the VMEbus International Trade Association) voted at its September 2004 standards meeting to move two working group draft standards into the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) development process. Also, Enea Embedded Technology recently announced the availability of turnkey engineering and support for U.S. FDA certification of its safety-critical software platform for embedded medical devices

VITA 41.0, VXS, is the base-level draft standard for the latest enhancement to VMEbus. VXS specifies a high performance, differential P0 connector that allows integration of high-speed serial fabrics combined with the real-time/hard deadline performance of VMEbus. For the first time, this allows a standardized method for integrating high-speed serial data pipes with high-performance VMEbus-based systems. Bob Tufford of Motorola , chair of the VITA 41 working group, says, “Moving VXS into ANSI ballot is the final phase to achieving what will become a recognized world-class standard.”

The other draft standard is a revision to existing ANSI/VITA 20 standard, “Conduction Cooling for PMC,” and focuses on providing a method to deal with possible connector fretting. Ivan Straznicky of Curtiss Wright Controls, Embedded Computing , and chair of the working group, headed this standards effort.

Enea Embedded Technology ’s offering, called Enea Embedded Medical Platform (EE-Med), supplies all software components needed to design safety-critical medical devices—including a hard real-time operating system, secure wireless/wireline networking, an embedded GUI, fault-tolerant database, and comprehensive development environment—says the company. An interesting aspect of EE-Med is its industrial origins, explains Michael Christofferson, product marketing manager at Enea. “The foundation of EE-Med is Enea’s safety-critical OSE real-time operating system, which combines deterministic, real-time response with memory protection facilities,” he adds.

—Frank J. Bartos, executive editor, Control Engineering, fbartos@reedbusiness.com

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