DATASHEET

Ensemble® 6000 Series
OpenVPX Intel 3rd Generation Core i7
LDS6523 Processing Module
New Low-Density Server Combines Ivy Bridge PerformanceWith Ultra-High Bandwidth Data Plane• 6U OpenVPX™ single 1-inch slot module• Intel® 3rd Generation Core™ i7 (Ivy Bridge mobile-class) Quad-Core™ processor 		at up to 2.3 GHz with 147 GFLOPS peak performance• 40 Gigabit Ethernet or InfiniBand high bandwidth switching:– Ethernet ecosystem; 40GBASE-KR4 and 10GBASE-KX4– Or InfiniBand ecosystem; FDR-10, QDR, DDR and SDR• Gen3 PCIe® co-processing and I/O expansion plane communications• Air-cooled, rugged conduction-cooled and Air Flow-By™ OpenVPX™ packaging options

The Ensemble™ 6000 Series OpenVPX™ Intel 3rd Generation
Core i7 Quad-Core LDS6523 Module from Mercury Systems
combines a powerful Ivy Bridge mobile-class quad-core Intelprocessor, the new Mellanox ConnectX-3 bridge for unsurpassed
fabric data rates, and configurable mezzanine I/O in a single 6U
OpenVPX slot. The LDS6523, as Mercury’s latest low-density
server, provides a next-generation architecture that balances the
disruptive computational capabilities of the AVX-enabled Core i7
processor with disruptive QDR InfiniBand or 40 Gigabit Ethernet
data paths. The combination provides a powerful and scalable
computing architecture that is well aligned with high-end radar,electronic warfare and image processing applications.

www.mrcy.com

Intel 3rd Generation Core i7 Ivy Bridge Mobile-Class Processor
At the heart of the LDS6523 is the Intel 64-bit 3rd Generation Corei7 3615QE processor, running at up to 2.3 GHz. This processor isbased on the Ivy Bridge processor architecture, which includes therevolutionary Intel Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) instruction
set and is produced using a 22 nm manufacturing process. The AVX
instruction set doubles the width of the processor’s SIMD engine
from 128 bit to 256 bit, delivering a significant improvement infloating-point processing.

Mercury Systems is a best-of-breed provider of commerciallydeveloped, open sensor and Big Data processing systems,
software and services for critical commercial, defense andintelligence applications.

Simultaneously, the 3615QE processor delivers a higher operating clock
frequency than the preceding 2nd Generation Core i7 processor without
any increase in power dissipation due to the 22 nm manufacturing process. The combination of these two architectural advancements resultsin the LDS6523 delivering approximately 147 peak GFLOPS.
The 3615QE includes a large 6 MB cache shared between the cores,
allowing many high-performance calculations to remain cache resident. This accelerates processing by eliminating the potential latency
required to access DRAM to fetch upcoming data.
The Intel 3rd Generation Core i7 3615QE processor supports dual highspeed DDR3-1600 memory controllers, providing up to 25 GB/s of raw
memory bandwidth. 8 GB of DDR3-DRAM with ECC support is populatedon the LDS6523. The LDS6523 makes use of the Panther Point Platform
Controller Hub (PCH) chipset, which provides integrated graphics
capabilities along with I/O bridging between the Intel processor andexternal devices.

Unparalleled Data Plane Bandwidth
The LDS6523 is the first embedded processing module to utilize dual
Mellanox ConnectX-3 host adaptors for data plane communications.
Bridging between the native Gen3 PCIe® interfaces on the Intel processor and the OpenVPX data plane, the ConnectX-3 can be configured
to support SDR, DDR, QDR, FDR10, 10GbE or 40GbE as the data plane

100101010
001101011
110101100

ACQUIREACQUIREDIGITIZE

100101010
001101011
110101100

100101010
001101011
110101100

100101010
001101011
110101100

ACQUIREPROCESSDIGITIZEACQUIREPROCESSDIGITIZESTORAGEACQUIREPROCESSDIGITIZESTORAGEEXPLOIT

100101010
001101011
110101100

ACQUIREPROCESSDIGITIZESTORAGEEXPLOIT
DISSEMINATE

www.mrcy.com

Figure 1. LDS6523 functional block diagram
protocol. This advancement scales the data plane bandwidth up to apeak theoretical rate of 5 GB/s per port, or 20 GB/s aggregate acrossthe entire four-port OpenVPX data plane. By scaling the data plane
bandwidth to match the increase in processing performance, theLDS6523 architecture ensures that the processor is never starved
for data.
By utilizing the Mellanox ConnectX-3 device, the LDS6523 is a modelfor open architecture high-performance computing throughout theembedded industry.
The LDS6523 module is compliant to the VITA 65 module profile
MOD6-PAY-4F1Q2U2T-12.2.1-n, where n can vary based on theConnectX-3 configuration. The LDS6523 is supported in chassis slotsthat are compliant with VITA 65 slot profile SLT6-PAY-4F1Q2U2T-10.2.1.

PCI Express Architecture
The LDS6523 provides dual 48-lane Gen3 PCIe switches for bothon-board switching and off-board expansion. This switch complex
provides an x8 PCIe interface to each of the two XMC sites, as well as
an x4 connection to a PCIe to PCI-X bridge for the single PMC site. This
allows mezzanines to operate at full bandwidth, optimizing the flowof I/O into the processing subsystem. Additional Gen3 x8 interfaces
are provided to the ConnectX-3 devices, allowing bridging to the data
plane without bottlenecking.
Externally, the LDS6523 implements a full Gen3 x16 PCIe connection to the OpenVPX expansion plane on the P2 VPX connector. This
expansion-plane interface enables the LDS6523’s compatibility with
Mercury’s GPU or FPGA based co-processing modules. The x16 PCIeconnection can be user-configured as dual x8 connections. These
configuration options let the module effectively act as an upstream/
downstream PCIe switch to allow the “chaining” of PCIe devices.

Mezzanine Card Flexibility

System Management

The LDS6523 provides two mezzanine sites: one PMC/XMC and one
XMC-only. Each of the standard mezzanine sites on the LDS6523
module can be configured with off-the-shelf mezzanine cards to bring
additional I/O into the system for processing or control. PMC cards aresupported with a 32-bit or 64-bit PCI/PCI-X interface at up to
133 MHz on the PMC/XMC site, with PMC user-defined I/O mapped tothe backplane. XMCs are supported with x8 PCIe

The LDS6523 module implements the advanced system 		management functionality architected in the OpenVPX specification to
enable remote monitoring, alarm management, and hardware revisionand health status.

supported on the J15/J25 connector per the VITA 42.3 standard. Thereare 20 differential pairs and 38 single-ended signals of XMC user I/O
mapped to the backplane via the J16/J26 connector.

Multiple I/O Options
In addition to the flexibility offered via the on-board mezzanine sites,
the LDS6523 offers a variety of additional built-in I/O options:• One 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet connection can berouted to the front panel on air-cooled configurations or to the
backplane.
• One additional 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet connection
is routed to the backplane.
• Two 1000BASE-BX SERDES Ethernet connections are routed tothe backplane per the OpenVPX control-plane specification.
• One DisplayPort interface is routed to an optional I/O adaptor,
supporting front-panel graphical display if required.
• One DVI graphics interface is provided to the backplane.
• One TIA-232 serial port is routed to the front panel on air-cooled
configurations, or to the backplane on conduction-cooled configurations. When routed to the backplane, the serial interface canbe configured for either TIA-232 or TIA-422/TIA-485 signaling.

Using the standard I2C bus and IPMI protocol, the on-board systemmanagement block implements the Intelligent Platform Management
Controller (IPMC) in accordance with the VITA 46.11 draft standard.
This allows the LDS6523 module to:• Read sensor values• Read and write sensor thresholds, allowing an application toreact to thermal, voltage or current variations that exceed thosethresholds• Reset the entire module• Power up/down the entire module• Retrieve module Field Replaceable Unit (FRU) information• Be managed remotely by a Chassis Management Controller at
the system level, such as implemented on Mercury’s 6U OpenVPX
switch fabric modules

Additional Features
The LDS6523 module provides all the features typically found on asingle-board computer. In addition to the sophisticated management
subsystem and fabric interconnect, the LDS6523 module provides
users with a toolkit enabling many different application use cases.
Features include:• Real-time clock with granularity to 1 ms and time measurementof up to 30 years• One front panel USB 2.0 interface is available on air-cooled• General-purpose timers for synchronization• Configurations, with an additional USB provided via an optional• Watchdog timer to support processor interrupt or reset• I/O adaptor• Multiple boot paths, including netboot, USB boot, and boot from
SATA or the on-board 8 GB flash device• Two backplane USB interfaces are available (one 2.0, one 3.0)
with both air-cooled and conduction-cooled configurations.
• One front-panel eSATA interface is provided on air-cooled configurations via an optional I/O adaptor.
• Two SATA interfaces to the backplane are provided to easilyinterface with storage devices.
• Eight GPIO lines act as discrete I/O usable as input, output, or to
generate interrupts on the module.
• Several additional bused signals enhance the functionality of the
LDS6523 module.

Open Software Environment
Mercury leverages over 25 years of multicomputer software expertise,including recent multicore processor expertise, across its many
platforms. This strategy is fully applied to the LDS6523 module. The
same Linux® development and run-time environment is implemented
on the LDS6523 module as on other Intel-based Mercury platforms
across the Ensemble 3000, 5000 and 6000 Series. Off-the-shelf open
software such as OFED and OpenMPI are fully supported by the
Mellanox ConnectX-3 data plane.

Mercury OpenVPX Ecosystem

Rugged air cooling, Air Flow-By

Sensor processing chain awareness, building blocks
and ecosystem

Air-cooled and conduction-cooled subsystems rely on filtration toremove contaminants from their cooling air streams. Mercury’s Air
Flow-By technology eliminates filtration with the most elegant coolingsolution available within a sealed and rugged package. Fully compliant
to VITA standards (including VITA 48.5), Air Flow-By maintains OpenVPX’s 1-inch pitch requirement, is highly resilient to liquid and particle
contamination, boosts SWaP, reduces operating temperature, extends
MTBF by an order of magnitude and enables embedded deployment of
the most powerful and reliable processing solutions.

Sensor chain awareness is having the technical expertise andresources to design and build capable, compatible solutions along thewhole sensor processor chain. From RF/Microwave, digital/analog signal manipulation to dense, Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) optimized
processing resources to Big Data analysis and actionable intelligencedissemination; Mercury’s rugged compute subassemblies leverage thebest commercial-item technology, enabling prime contractors to win
more business.
Modern sensor compute subassemblies are customized assemblies
of interoperable building blocks built to open standards. Mercury’s
hardware and software portfolio of building blocks are physically andelectrically interoperable as defined by international industrial
standards, including OpenVPX.

LDS6523 modules are available as air-cooled (various levels ofruggedness), and rugged Air Flow-By and conduction-cooled variants.

Specifications
Intel® 3rd Generation Core™ i7 Ivy Bridge Processor
Quad-core with Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX)
2.3 GHz 3615QE

System bandwidth – the effect of interconnect performance

Peak performance 		

147 GFLOPS (peak theoretical)

Bandwidth is critical and especially applicable to switched fabricresources which dictate the responsiveness of the entire subsystem.
All modular solutions, including OpenVPX are to some degree oranother, interconnect-bound; they are restricted by the limitations of
the best industry interconnect technology. To address this, Mercury
fabricates system interconnections with innovative technology which
mitigates insertion-loss and cross-talk while maintaining full VITA/
OpenVPX compliance. The resulting and significant system 		
performance boost is especially discernible as subsystems scale larger.

Threads per core		2

Flexible, modular system configurations
Mercury OpenVPX subsystems are designed from a suite ofsophisticated open architecture building blocks that are combined andscaled to meet a broad range of advanced sensor chain processing
requirements. Mercury subsystems may include analog, digital andmixed-signal receiver modules, single-board computers and signal
processing payload modules. Payloads may have acquisition,
digitization, processing, and exploitation and dissemination elements
and include FPGA, CPU, GPU or ADC/DAC technology.

Module packaging

Intel Virtualization Technology
DDR3-1600

8 GB with ECC

Raw memory bandwidth

25 GB/s (total)

Local SATA flash		

8 GB

BIOS SPI flash

Mellanox ConnectX-3 VPI Host Card Adaptors
Provides fabric bridging to data plane
Supports DDR or QDR InfiniBand, or 40 Gigabit Ethernet protocols**The LDS6523 currently supports DDR Infiniband. Planned variants will support QDR Infiniband or 40 GigE. Variants may require changes to the systeminfrastructure such as connectors, backplane, etc.

IPMI (System Management)
On-board IPMI Controller
Voltage and temperature monitor
Geographical address monitor
Power/reset control
On-board FRU EEPROM interface
FPGA, CPU and CPLD interfaces

VPX-REDI

Ethernet Connections

The VPX (VITA 46) standard defines 6U and 3U board formats with ahigh performance interconnects capable of supporting today’s highspeed fabric interfaces. VPX may be paired with the ruggedizedenhanced design implementation standard — REDI (VITA 48).
SFM6104 modules when implemented as conduction-cooled or Air
Flow-ByTM are VPX-REDI compatible. Air-cooled equivalents conformto the same OpenVPX form factor and are suitable for less challenging
environments. Targeted for harsh embedded environments, VPX-REDI
supports higher functional density and Two-Level Maintenance (2LM).
2LM allows relatively unskilled maintenance personnel to replace afailed module.

1000BASE-BX Ethernet to P4 connector 		

2

OpenVPX control plane
10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet to P4 connector

1

Accessible via OpenVPX RTM or external chassis interface
10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet connection 		1

To front panel (air-cooled module) or backplane P4 connector 		(conduction-cooled module)
Ethernet functions supported by the chipset include:
UDP, TCP, SCTP, ARP, IPv4, IPv6, IEEE1588, flow control,
802.1P (priority) and 802.1Q (VLAN)

OpenVPX Multi-Plane Architecture

Mechanical

System management via IPMB-A and IPMB-B link on P0 management plane

6U VPX (air-cooled and conduction-cooled)

InfiniBand or 40 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces on P1 data plane1.0” slot pitch

Full x16 or dual x8 Gen3 PCIe expansion plane to P2 connector

OpenVPX and VPX-REDI

Dual 1000BASE-BX Ethernet control plane

PMC-X/XMC Sites

Compliance
OpenVPX System Specification encompasses VITA 46.0, 46.3, 46.4, 46.6, 46.11

Mezzanine sites		

1 PMC/XMC, 1 XMC only

Compatible with VITA 65

PCI-X-to-PCIe bridge		

Connects PMC site to on-board

VITA 46/48.1/48.2 (REDI)

			PCIe switch
PMC PCI support		

33 and 66 MHz

PMC PCI-X support		

66, 100, and 133 MHz

PMC user-defined I/O from J14 to backplane
PCIe XMC sites per VITA 42.3 with XMC user-defined I/O from Jn6 to backplane

Additional I/O Capabilities
One RS-232 serial interface to front panel (air-cooled) or 			backplane (conduction-cooled)
Configurable for RS-232 or RS-422 signaling when routed to backplane
One additional RS-232/RS-422 serial interface to backplane		One front-panel USB 2.0 interface (air-cooled configurations only)
One USB 2.0 interface to backplane				One USB 3.0 interface to backplane				One front-panel DisplayPort interface (with optional I/O adaptor)
One DVI interface to backplane					One front-panel eSATA interface (with optional I/O adaptor)		
Two SATA interfaces to backplane					Eight single-ended GPIO interfaces to backplane			
System signals to backplane
NVMRO, ChassisTest, Environmental Bypass, MemoryClear

Serial RapidIO®, PCIe, 10 Gigabit Ethernet

Environmental

Environmental Qualification Levels
Air-cooled
Commercial L0

Rugged L1

Rugged L2

Air Flow-By

Conduction-cooled

Rugged L4

Rugged L3

Ruggedness

•

••

••

•••

•••

Moisture/dust protection

•

••

••

•••

•••

Typical cooling performance
Temperature

Operating*Operating temperature
maximum rate of change
Temperature

Storage~140W*~150W*~200W*~150W**-25ºC to +55ºC-45ºC to +70ºC-40ºC to +60ºC-40ºC to +71ºC

N/A

5ºC/min

10ºC/min

10ºC/min

10ºC/min-40ºC to +85ºC-55ºC to +85ºC-55ºC to +125ºC-55ºC to +125ºC-55ºC to +125ºC

Operating*

10-90%,
non-condensing

5-95%,
non-condensing

5-95%,
non-condensing

5-95%, non-condensing
100% condensing

5-95%, non-condensing
100% condensing

Storage10-90%,
non-condensing

5-95%,
non-condensing

5-95%,
non-condensing

5-95%, non-condensing
100% condensing

5-95%, non-condensing
100% condensing

Operating*‡

0-10,000ft

0-30,000ft

0-30,000ft

0-30,000ft

0-70,000ft

Humidity

Altitude~140W*
0ºC to +40ºC

Storage

0-30,000ft

0-50,000ft

0-70,000ft

0-70,000ft

0-70,000ft

Random

0.003 g2/Hz;
20-2000 Hz, 1 hr/axis

0.04 g2/Hz;
20-2000 Hz, 1 hr/axis

0.04 g2/Hz;
20-2000 Hz, 1 hr/axis

0.1 g2/Hz;
5-2000 Hz, 1 hr/axis

0.1 g2/Hz;
5-2000 Hz, 1 hr/axis

Sine

N/A

N/A

N/A

10G peak;
5-2000 Hz, 1 hr/axis

10G peak;
5-2000 Hz, 1 hr/axis

Shockz-axis: 20g;
x and y-axes: 32g;
(11ms 1/2-sine pulse,
3 positive, 3 negative)z-axis: 50g;
x and y-axes: 80g;
(11ms 1/2-sine pulse,
3 positive, 3 negative)z-axis: 50g;
x and y-axes: 80g;
(11ms 1/2-sine pulse,
3 positive, 3 negative)z-axis: 50g;
x and y-axes: 80g;
(11ms 1/2-sine pulse,
3 positive, 3 negative)z-axis: 50g;
x and y-axes: 80g;
(11ms 1/2-sine pulse,
3 positive, 3 negative)

N/A

Contact Factory

Contact Factory

10% NaCl

10% NaCl

Vibration

Salt/Fog
VITA 47

Contact Factory* Customer must maintain required cfm level. Consult factory for the required flow rates.
** Card edge should be maintained below 71ºC
Storage Temperature is defined per MIL-STD-810F, Method 502.4, para 4.5.2, where the product under non-operational test is brought to an initial high temperature cycle to remove moisture. Then the unit
under non-operational test will be brought to the low storage temperature. The low temperature test is maintained for 2 hours. The product is then brought to the high storage temperature and is maintainedfor 2 hours. The product is then brought back to ambient temperature. All temperature transitions are at a maximum rate of 10ºC/min. One cold/hot cycle constitutes the complete non-operational storage
temperature test. This assumes that the board level products are individually packaged in accordance with ASTM-D-3951 approved storage containers. These tests are not performed in Mercury shipping
containers, but in an unrestrained condition. Please consult the factory if you would like additional test details.
All products manufactured by Mercury meet elements of the following specifications: MIL-STD-454, MIL-STD-883, MIL-HDBK-217F, and MIL-I-46058 or IPC-CC-830, and various IPC standards. Mercury’s
inspection system has been certified in accordance with MIL-I-45208A.

Additional Services• Cold Start Testing• Cold Soak Testing• Custom Vibration• CFD Thermal Analysis• Finite Element Analysis

Standard Module, Optional Services• Safety Margin Analysis• Temperature Cycling• Power Cycling• Environmental Stress Screening• Engineering Change Order (ECO) Notification• ECO Control• Custom Certificate of Conformity (CofC)• Custom UID Labeling• Alternate Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) Calculations• Hazmat Analysis• Diminished Manufacturing Sources (DMS) Management• Longevity of Suppy (LOS)• Longevity of Repair (LOR)

Contact factory for additional information

EchoCore, Echotek, Ensemble and MultiCore Plus are registered trademarks and Air Flow-By, AFB, Innovation That Matters, Mercury Systems, POET, SecureConfig and StreamDirect are trademarks of Mercury Systems,
Inc. Other product and company names mentioned may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Mercury Systems, Inc. believes this information is accurate as of its publication date and is not
responsible for any inadvertent errors. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.
Copyright © 2014 Mercury Systems, Inc.			

2932.06E-0214-DS-lds6523

INNOVATION THAT MATTERS ™

Corporate Headquarters
201 Riverneck Road
Chelmsford, MA 01824-2820 USA(978) 967-1401 • (866) 627-6951
Fax (978) 256-3599
www.mrcy.com

Europe Mercury Systems, Ltd.
Unit 1 - Easter Park, Benyon Road
Silchester, Reading
RG7 2PQ United Kingdom+ 44 0 1189 702050 • Fax + 44 0 1189 702321
www.mrcy.com

www.mrcy.com

Optional Environmental Screening and Analysis Services