Kontron has announced that its Chassis Monitoring Board (CMB) has been selected as an Editor's Choice Product by the Military Embedded Systems Magazine. The Kontron CMB was chosen by the editors for their October 2011 issue for its monitoring and management of key VME and VPX system parameters that help maintain operation even if the system crashes. Kontron's new CMB is designed as an effective VME and VPX system condition monitoring and management unit that enables improved reliability and availability of mission-critical COTS applications.

"What good is it to be on a ship if the entire ship is sinking, figuratively speaking? The same idea applies to VME and VPX systems managed and monitored exclusively by system-implemented firmware and chipsets: Odds are such a system management scheme won't continue working if the system itself crashes. Enter Kontron's Chassis Monitoring Board (CMB), providing management and monitoring of parameters including power supply, airflow, and temperature of installed boards," according to Military Embedded Systems Magazine. "Its power requirements are less than 1 W (yes, you read that right), and it can control and monitor as many as eight temperature sensors, eight power modules, and eight fans at once. It also renders out-of-band management and monitoring for as many as eight VPX or VME boards keeping an effective eye on the system."

The Kontron CMB is a unified solution for VPX and VME systems that streamlines system monitoring and management of rugged applications. The Kontron CMB centralizes out-of-band monitoring and management of installed boards and relevant system parameters such as temperature, airflow and power supply in mission-critical COTS systems with high demands on reliability, availability and ruggedness. The Kontron CMB is currently deployed in a VME chassis used for a satellite navigation system program, which has resulted in optimized application development and improved Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). (For further information, contact Ms Priyanca Gopi, Kontron Technology India Pvt Ltd, Bangalore. Email: priyanca.gopi@kontron.in)