Kontron announces VX3406 ethernet board for harsh defence and aerospace environments

Kontron has announced the VX3406, a 3U VPX Ethernet board for harsh environments and the first to offer up to six 1000BASE-T ports each managed by a dedicated Ethernet controller.

The VX3406 is a 3U VPX Ethernet board for harsh environments Credit: Kontron

Designed to ensure zero bandwidth contention, provide superior fault and cybersecurity isolation, and precise traffic prioritisation it is intended for C4ISR systems, unmanned platforms and any connected warfare scenario. The ruggedised, low power consumption VX3406 ensures high resilience, secure segmentation and real-time data handling across harsh environments.

The VX3406 integrates a powerful 8-port, 8-lane PCIe Gen3 switch offering users the ability to leverage up to four independent 1G/2.5G ports fully supporting TSN/IEEE1388 along with up to two dedicated 1G copper ports, enabling a total of six concurrent 1000BASE-T ports for network expansion.

Easy integration of TSN-capable controllers across its multiple independent ports avoids the need for legacy deterministic protocols or external switches, ensuring guaranteed delivery and timing precision for demanding embedded aerospace and defence environments.

Consequently, the VX3406 is suitable in use cases where low-latency, jitter-free deterministic Ethernet communication are a prerequisite, including real-time sensor fusion, mission system coordination, control-loop communications and synchronised audio/video streams.

The conduction cooled Kontron VX3406 is now available with an air-cooled variant available on request.