Novo Space offers custom and off-the-shelf backplanes in single-string and dual-string topologies. Novo's cross-strapped high-throughput backplanes are optimized for bandwidth and reliability.

Active

Backplanes

The MMU001AF Mass Memory Unit (MMU) offers up to 4Tb of SLC NAND raw memory, organized in four independent banks of 128 GB each. 
In combination with our SpaceVPX single board computers, it can be used as a massive memory storage for the ever increasing needs of data storage in high resolution payloads and communication systems.

Main system storage 
Signal processing and communication buffering 
Payload storage

Applications

Our VITA 57.1 full compliant <a href="/products?category=fmc">FMC boards</a> can be connected to any compliant carrier. 
Novo Space also offers a suite of <a href="/products?category=ip-cores-%26-drivers">IP cores</a> to achieve the systems full potential while allowing faster developing cycles.

Ecosystem

Memory Type

Endurance

Memory Organization

Form factor

MMU001AF - Mass Memory Unit (Mammut)

The SBC002AV is a high performance single board computer compatible with the Vita 78 SpaceVPX standard. 
The main device is a Zynq Ultrascale+ with a 4 GBytes ECC protected DDR3 SDRAM.
A VITA 57.1 FMC connector allows to extend its capabilities with any compatible FMC board. 
This is our ideal platform for implementing machine learning using TensorFlow and PyTorch directly on FPGA fabric without modification while keeping a low power consumption.

We provide a suite of <a href="/products?category=ip-cores-%26-drivers">IP cores</a> to achieve the systems full potential while allowing faster developing cycles. 
FMC daughterboards offer flexibility to add mission specific hardware to the system. Constraining the engineering to the daughter card minimizes effort, time, and risk. 
Application-specific FMC boards include:
<ul>
<li>Solid-State Memory</li>
<li>High-performance ADC or DAC</li>
<li>High-throughput interfaces like Camera Link® and SpaceWire.</li>
<li>Low-speed control interfaces like MIL-STD-1553-B, UART, CAN, and more.</li>
<li>Ad-hoc applicationspecific cards</li>
</ul>
Check our <a href="/products?category=fmc">FMC daughter cards</a> offering for more information. 
We also provide a <a href="/products/testing-kit">dev kit</a> to accelerate software development on our boards and <a href="/products/heatsinks-and-bezels">heatsinks and shielding</a>.

Avionics and Payload subsystems 
Signal processing 
Computer vision and AI

Operating systems

Storage

Dimensions

Main device

SBC002AV

This single board computer is ideal for low power applications. Its main device is a Smartfusion2 from Microsemi, a System on Chip (SOC) that supports a Microcontroller subsystem (including an M3 microcontroller, DDR controller and other peripherals) as well as FPGA fabric in the same device. The inclusion of both a hard microcontroller subsystem as well as a soft FPGA fabric enables great flexibility an essential part of Novo Space's DNA. These FPGA fabric allows software defined architectures and IOs, allowing the support of multiple options for FPGA Mezzanine Cards (FMCs) as well as IO to the backplane.
This is the ideal platform for implementing machine learning using TensorFlow and PyTorch directly on FPGA fabric without modification while keeping a low power consumption.

Avionics and Payload subsystems 
System IO expansion 
Low power solutions 
Along with a storage FMC it can be used as the main data storage

SBC003AV

The B01900AV is a 3U 1 Slot loopback backplane designed to be used in a lab environment to easily test all backplane signals in a SpaceVPX board. It also provides power control for the SpaceVPX carrier board and information on its power consumption.

Novo Space's <a href="/products/testing-kit">dev kit</a> aims at supporting all development stages, from first power-up, to developing high level applications.
Novo offering includes:
<ul>
<li>Loopback boards (<a href="/products/sup001af">FMC</a> and <a href="/products/b01900av">SpaceVPX</a>) to test interfaces.</li>
<li>Breakouts boards (<a href="/products/sup002af">FMC</a> and <a href="/products/b01901av">SpaceVPX</a>) to expose pins.</li>
<li>A Raspberry Pi cape for remote access to a dev setup.</li>
<li>A graphic dashboard to display power consumption and other events.</li>
<li>Software tools to program and accelerate development.</li>
</ul>

Development

Connector form factor

Input power

B01900AV - 1 slot loopback backplane

The GPU001AF is a mezzanine card for high-performance edge computing applications. This product hosts a power-efficient NVIDIA® Jetson™ TX2i module. 
The engineering module comes with an external 1Gb Ethernet connector, a micro SD slot,a USB connector directly to the Jetson, and a NAND memory to accelerate the development cycle. 
Product to be released in Q4 2022.

Machine learning (Target detection, image clasification, in space servicing) Edge computing Image processing

Ethernet

Memory

Under development

GPU001AF - General purpose GPU

The SUP001AF is a loopback board to quickly test connections from a carrier board to a standard Vita 57.1 FMC HPC connector.

SUP001AF - FMC loopback board

The B01901AV exposes al interfaces of a SpaceVPX connector with the payload profiles. It allows control of any standard compliant board while gathering telemetry. 
Using its connectors, board can be interconnected and allows to quickly develop applications, even those needing high speed interfaces. 
When a controller profile board is needed a breakout cape can be used to exposed the desired interfaces.

B01901AV - 1 Slot Breakout Backplane

The SUP002AF FMC breakout board is a mezzanine card designed to be used as a breakout board of an VITA 57.1 connector. It also has the basic peripherals to work like a generic FMC such as the EEPROM and clocks needed by the standard. The user can design fast prototypes on shields mounted on top of it and reuse the board.

The breakout area has almost all pins exposed in a 100 mils by 100 mils matrix. The pinout is divided in columns (using letters) and rows (using numbers). Most of the VITA 57.1 connector pins are available on the breakout zone. Specifically the LA, HA and HB banks are free to use by the user and their operation voltage is determined by VADJ in the carrier board.

Breakout zone

Clock synthesizer

EEPROM

SUP002AF - FMC breakout board

Versatile, ruggedized, conduction cooled enclosure for single and dual string (redundant) 3U VPX systems. 

Modular stiffener heatsink frame

Stepped corner joints (double 90 turns) at each wall interface and EMC gaskets between front panels

CNC Machined 6061-T6 Aluminum​

M3/M4 stainless-steel fasteners and self-locking, stainless-steel inserts for severe vibration and shock

Exx001AV: VPX Chassis (4 to 12 slots)

Most systems need custom input output capabilities, the FMC card is an ideal place because most of the complexity remains on the SpaceVPX board. Novo Space can help clients leveraging its expertise in designing, developing and integrating custom rad-tolerant FMCs, in a fast and efficient way. Please contact us to design the FMC board you need.

Custom

Custom FMC Designs

The N02101AV is a 2 slots VPX computer. The computer supports two VPX boards without redundancy or two redundant boards in hot or cold backup configuration. There are different variants of this product hosting the different VPX SBCs developed by Novo Space. In all cases, the FMC slot is populated with the FMC Mass Memory module (MMU001AF) developed by Novo Space. The N02101AV leverages the E02101AV ruggedized chassis also developed by Novo Space.

N02101AV: 2-slot SpaceVPX computer

The SpaceWire IP core is compliant with the IEEE 1355 standard. It is capable of 100Mbps full duplex bitrate.
Support for FreeRTOS, RTEMS and Linux is available, a TCP/IP networking driver is provided for Linux.
This IP core comes in 2 different versions. The first one is presented to the processor as a peripheral (AXI/AHB), the second one is a "bare metal" implementation that can be connected to any HDL design without any processor involved or when maximum bitrate is needed.

This IP core comes in different versions: 
<ul>AXI/AXILite: Ready to connect to an AXI/AXI lite bus. It has an AXI lite slave for configuration and an AXI full interface to read/write data from memory</ul>
<ul>AHB/APB: Same concept as AXI/AXILite configuration but with APB slave for configuration and AHB for writing memory</ul>
<ul>AxiStream: Core to be integrated directly to an HDL project without any type of buses. With this configuration, the maximum bitrate can be achieved</ul>

Versions

NULL packets

EOP/EEP

Fifo depth

Time-codes

Wormhole addressing

Flow control

SpaceWire

Serial RapidIO is a communication protocol developed to ensure fast and reliable interconnection between Novo Space boards. 
The basic idea behind Serial RapidIO is to enable communication speeds up to 25Gbps/lane (up to 100Gbps/port with a 4-lane port) while allowing the user to send a variety of different message
s with CRC protection, retransmission on error, and virtual channels for quality of service. The specification also defines multiple forms of remote memory access and network interfaces, allowing the user to create a network of SRIO endpoints. 
Novo Space's SRIO IP-Core has been successfully tested at 2Gbps/lane (SBC003) and 8Gbps/lane (SBC002).

Serial RapidIO

The NAND memory controller IP core is compliant with the ONFI standard working on asynchronous mode.  
This core also supports error correction on the fly without any processor intervention.  
Up to 8 memory chips can be accessed on the same bus with write speed of 100Mbps and read speeds of 120Mbps.
Support for Linux OS is already implemented and it is included with the IP core, alowing to use UBIFS and JFFS.
The design is already optimized and tested for all Novo Space's products including Microchip SmartFusion2® and Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+® 

This IP core comes in different versions: <ul>AXI/AXILite: Ready to connect to a AXI/AXILite bus. It has a AXILite slave to be configured and a AXI full interface to read/write data from memory</ul><ul>AHB/APB:Same concept as AXI/AXILite configuration but with APB slave for configuration and AHB to write memory</ul>

NV-DDR I/O

Multi chip/lun

Onfi version

ECC Algorithm

NAND Memory Controller


The SpaceFibre IP core supports up to 8 lanes. On the Microchip SmartFusion2 the bit rate is the maximum allowed by the device, 2Gpbs per lane (16 Gbps).
In the case of the Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ this rate is 8Gbps per lane (64Gbps total).
This IP core comes in 3 different versions. The first one is presented to the processor as a peripheral (AXI/AHB), the second one is a "bare metal" implementation that can be connected to any HDL design without any processor involved or maximum bitrate is needed. The last one is a bus extensor MMAP custom implementation on top of SpaceFibre.
For the peripheral flavor, Linux support is available for transmitting raw frames or present it to the OS as a networking interface, supporting TCP/IP.

This IP core comes in different versions: <ul>AXI/AXILite: Ready to connect to an AXI/AXI lite bus. It has an AXI lite slave for configuration and an AXI full interface to read/write data from/to memory</ul><ul>AHB/APB: Same concept as AXI/AXILite version but with APB slave for configuration and AHB for memory access</ul><ul>AxiStream: Core to be integrated directly to an HDL project without any bus. The maximum bitrate can be achieved in this version</ul><ul>MMAP: Custom implementation to extend the bus to another FPGA and use all its peripherals as they were in the same chip.</ul>

End of packet

Virtual channels

Multilane

Bitrate

Packet retransmission on error

SpaceFibre

The SBC004AV is a single board computer with a Xilinx Versal ACAP. 
Using AI computing on the edge allows the most computing demanding applications to be deployed, while keeping performance per watt ratios high. 
Working alongside our SpaceVPX boards and FMCs, the SBC004AV can do the processing heavy lifting of the whole system, whether they be graphics intensive
applications, signals processing or complex communications scenarios. 
Product under development.

SBC004AV

Novo's components are ruggedized. The mechanical design (optional) is aimed at transferring heat away from the most dissipative electronic components via direct conduction. 
The shielding is design to stand the mechanical stress in the launch vehicle, and reduce the radiation exposure in space to sustain the TID required for long missions.

VPX / FMC Shielding

Novo Space development kit allows immediate access to the hardware. This kit enables software development to start months before having the backplane ready. 
This setup supports several configurations and connections, which enables SBCs to be configured as a controller or a payload profile, and interconnect them easily. 
The complete kit is intended to test interfaces, display power consumption, and have an easy and quick way to interact with the hardware. 
The Dev kit consists on several boards and tools working together: 
<ul>
<li>SUP005AX - Raspberry Pi cape: sits on the RPi header and exposes all signals to regular connectors</li>
<li><a href="/products/sup001af">B01900AV</a> - Backplane loopback: tests the backplane connector interface of SpaceVPX boards</li>
<li><a href="/products/sup001af">B01901AV</a> - Backplane breakout: connects the RPI to SBCs, control its power and interfaces</li>
<li><a href="/products/sup001af">SUP001AF</a> - FMC loopback: tests the FMC connector interface</li>
<li><a href="/products/sup002af">SUP002AF</a> - FMC breakout: quickly prototype FMC boards to de-risk new FMC design</li>
<li>NOVAPI - software platform to program and interact with the hardware</li>
<li>Power dashboard - displays power consumption of the SpaceVPX and FMC cards connected to the breakout board</li>
</ul>

Development kit

Thanks to the dual modularity in our poducts and their advanced plug and play software, we can deliver highly tailored systems in short periods of time. 
Our products favor the integration of many functionalities into one single box, connected via a cross-strapped high-thoughput backplane, yielding unprecedented levels of reliability and SWaP. 
Example functions/subsystems that could be integrated into the same chassis include C&DH, ADCS/AOCS, TT&C, Thermal Control, Downlink, Mass Memory, Payload processing.

Custom Subsystem

DAP is a protocol defined in the Space VPX standard. Novo Space offers a whole solution including a DAP target and all the software infrastructure to manage and fully leverage its capabilities.

DAP solution

Novo Space approach to Fault detection isolation and recovery is at many levels. Not only provides documentation but FDIR software is implemented in our systems. 
Redundancy is implemented at all system levels; IP cores, electronics, modules and interfaces are design with a redundancy and fault detection mindset.

FDIR

A software star tracker solution that can be used with any camera hardware, achieving 3 fps for HD images.  It can run in any Linux system, for example our SBC002.

Star Tracker

We successfully implemented target detection on our boards fabric optimizing a neural network coefficients using Xilinx's Vitis. Contact us to learn more about implementing machine learning in our boards.

Vitis / Target detection

To complete the most demanding missions, many parts of the system are completely custom wich implies complexity, cost and time. 
Novo Space leverages its expertise in designing, developing and integrating custom rad-tolerant systems, in a fast and efficient way. 
Please contact us to design the board to fulfill your needs.

Custom VPX board

Versatile, ruggedized, conduction cooled 2-slot enclosure for single and dual string (redundant) 3U VPX systems. 

E02101AV: 2-Slot VPX Chassis

High Performance

Low Power

Power Units

Input/Output

Dev Kits

VPX Ecosystem

Machine Learning

Communications

Inactive

Under Development

By leveraging the SpaceVPX standard, Novo is designing modular components that can be combined to create systems according to mission requirements, ranging from fully redundant to single-threaded “bare minimum” systems.

(160 mm x 100 mm x 25.4 mm)

SpaceVPX Boards

Novo’s products incorporate the VITA 57 (FMC) specification, providing its modules with different I/O capabilities. These FMC mezzanine cards offer the flexibility to add mission-specific hardware to the system; constraining custom engineering to the mezzanine card can minimize effort, time, and risk. 

FMC Mezzanine Cards

IP cores and drivers developed by Novo Space

IP Cores & Drivers

The backplane provides fast interconnect through high-speed serial links. The backplanes are designed for the specific needs of the mission (2 to 16 slots, switched and mesh configuration.), according to the level of reliability and number of SpaceVPX boards in the system.

Backplanes / SpaceUM

Mechanical products such as chassis and heatsinks

Mechanical parts

Boards to accelerate the development of applications and hardware in Novo Space's ecosystem

Our ecosystem