GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms Secures $645,000 Order From General Dynamics Land Systems

GBX410 Gigabit Ethernet switch to be deployed in Abrams tank

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.- GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms, a unit of GE Enterprise Solutions, today announced that it had secured an order worth $645,000 from General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS) of Sterling Heights, MI. GE Fanuc will supply a custom version of its 3U VPX NETernity™ GBX410 Gigabit Ethernet switch and XMCXGO XMC card that will be deployed as part of the US Army Heavy Brigade Combat Team (HBCT) M1A2 Abrams Ethernet Switch Module (ESM). GE Fanuc was selected after six months of discussion and competition. Production quantities for the M1A2 Abrams Tank are estimated at $8.7 million over the next five years.

“GDLS, like an increasing number of major prime contractors, recognized that the VPX architecture could uniquely deliver against their requirement for very high speed processing,” said Rob McKeel, Vice President, Embedded Systems at GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms. “The available space, however, in which to fit the required functionality was severely constrained, and we were able to leverage our extensive experience and expertise to provide a custom version of a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) product that provides GDLS with all the benefits of a COTS solution but that precisely meets their requirement.”

The NETernity™ GBX410 is an IPv6 capable fully managed Layer 2/3 Gigabit Ethernet switch in the 3U VPX form factor designed to meet the most demanding requirements for network switching in tactical applications. It features a non-blocking shared memory architecture that provides a 44 Gbits/second core and delivers full wire speed performance with minimal latency to all ports simultaneously. The switch is available in both air- and conduction-cooled formats. The XMCXGO mezzanine provides additional dual 10 GB Optical ports to dramatically increase total throughput and overall system flexibility.

The GBX410 has comprehensive management capabilities that include VLANs, Link Aggregation, Spanning Tree, IPv4 and IPv6, traffic policing, QoS, guaranteed bandwidth and SNMP support. This switch can be expanded to a 24-port non-blocking solution by connecting two GBX410 together via the integral 10 Gb uplink port.