PCI Express backplanes, designed and manufactured within the United States, have long been a key component in many of Trenton’s industrial, rugged and military rackmount computers.  Featured in a recent post entitled PCI Express Backplanes Enable Powerful System Capabilities, the BP4FS6890 is quite unique in its ability to support four separate computers in one 5U rackmount enclosure!

Trenton Systems BP4FS6890 Four-Segment PCI Express Backplane

The four segments of the BP4FS6890 PCI Express backplane will support any of Trenton’s graphics or server-class PICMG 1.3 system host boards, and each segment can be independently controlled and powered or grouped together.  This PCIe backplane utilizes an independent power source from +12V or standard ATX/EPS power supplies, and an optional on-board 10/100/1000Base-T Ethernet switch enables SHB-to-SHB communication.  The BP4FS6890 is also backed by a five-year factory warranty.

Putting the BP4FS6890 to Work

While this backplane can be found in a variety of 4U, 5U or 6U customer-driven computing solutions, the TRC5003 5U rackmount computer takes full advantage of the BP4FS6890′s ability to support four PICMG 1.3 system host boards as completely independent systems.

Trenton Systems TRC5003 5U Rugged Rackmount Computer

As you can see in the photo above, the TRC5003 features secured front-access to all four hard disk drives in addition to front-access DVDs and USB ports that are dedicated to each of the independent backplane segments.  The image shown below depicts a fully-loaded configuration supported by four rear-access 1U removable power supplies.  The extremely rugged design of the all-aluminum chassis makes this an ideal solution for a wide variety of military and government applications.

Trenton Systems TRC5003 5U Rugged Rackmount Computer Rear View

This white paper on Cluster Computing In Space-Constrained Applications notes the inherent power that these multi-segment configurations provide when used to address the computational needs of military programs such as cryptography analysis or aerial reconnaissance & surveillance.

A chassis with four dual-processor Trenton SHBs can run up to 32 different applications—one for each processor core in the chassis. This means that one 5U rackmount computer, with four dual-processor SHBs, can take the place of sixteen 1U dual processor motherboard systems. Using one 5U enclosure instead of sixteen 1U enclosures reduces rack space by 19.25” (48.90cm)—a nearly 70% savings.

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