Alta Data Releases Thunderbolt 3 Avionics Appliance

Alta Data Technologies (Alta) has released an innovative, native Thunderbolt 3 Technology appliance product for MIL-STD-1553 and ARINC-429 applications.

The TBOLT-MA4 targets notebooks, desktops and servers with USB-C PCI Express (PCIe) Thunderbolt 3 Technology to connect network or peripheral devices.

This product, which is about the size of a standard card deck, provides 1-2 dual redundant 1553 channels, and/or 8 ARINC-429 channels. In addition to 1553/ARINC messaging controls, TBOLT can generate or capture (o-scope) raw bus signals for protocol and electrical troubleshooting.

The TBOLT-MA4 is available now for immediate delivery.

“Our TBOLT-MA4 product represents the latest peripheral interconnect technology for MIL-STD-1553 and ARINC avionics busses", says Harry Wild, VP Sales for Alta Data.

"In the past, there was always a stark difference in avionics application deployments of notebook verses desktop/server architectures. Notebooks had to rely on fragile PCMCIA/ExpressCard plug-ins, which are being made obsolete, or USB devices that don’t offer the same backplane performance as plug-in cards. TBOLT-MA4 bridges this gap to offer the same PCIe backplane performance of fast asynchronous memory accesses and hardware interrupts that is found in standard plug-in interface cards, but now in a small rugged appliance.”

He adds, “Computers have achieved such small size with high performance that the architectural choices between traditional desk top or rack-mount servers has really blurred with notebook or embedded systems. Thunderbolt technology of the TBOLT-MA4 provides the customer an alternative to traditional interface cards without sacrificing performance.”

Jake Haddock, Alta CTO, continues, “Most other products on the market are processor or multi PCIe bridge based where our design is a true native interface. We took the extra effort to maximize the PCIe connection to best match the performance seen with PCIe interface cards. The customer can take existing Alta applications and run them on a TBOLT device, often without any code changes. The engineer can develop applications on notebook computers and know that the code will directly port back to their server or desktop architectures. Also, Alta’s products are uniquely designed to provide channel-level independent thread support, including hardware interrupts, which can greatly simplify multi-channel application development.”


For more information on the TBOLT-MA4 or any other product from Alta Data, please contact Sarsen Technology - [email protected] or +44 1672 511166.