Artesyn expands ControlSafe™ SIL4 COTS Rail Computing Platform to address more train control and rail signaling applications

At the InnoTrans exhibition, Artesyn Embedded Technologies unveiled the ControlSafe™ Expansion Box Platform a COTS computing system designed to be certified to SIL4, which can substantially accelerate time-to-market for the deployment of new and upgrades to train control and rail signaling systems.

The platform, an extension of the company’s ControlSafe Platform, with a larger chassis to house larger I/O modules, can either be configured as a dual-redundant safety system like the ControlSafe Platform or deployed as an I/O expansion subsystem.

Linsey Miller, marketing vice president, Artesyn Embedded Technologies, said: “By leveraging the same technologies and safety architecture as our original ControlSafe Platform, but with more capacity, the new ControlSafe Expansion Box Platform will significantly enhance the growing Artesyn ControlSafe product portfolio. The shared safety architecture makes it easy to transfer applications between the two and deploy a common platform for a wide range of rail signaling and train control applications. For example, one of our customers is using the ControlSafe Expansion Box Platform for a computer-based interlocking application in large and busy train stations where increased I/O capacity was needed. Artesyn’s expertise in safety systems for rail – as shown by the recent SIL4 certification of our ControlSafe Platform – means that customers can avoid the potentially high costs and risks associated with this system development and certification process and can use a COTS product.”

Artesyn will demonstrate the ControlSafe product portfolio – including both the ControlSafe Expansion Box Platform and the ControlSafe Platform variants – at the InnoTrans exhibition (Hall 6.1, booth 226) in Berlin, Germany between September 20^th and 23^th, 2016.

Artesyn’s ControlSafe product portfolio is designed to meet all the functional safety, reliability and availability requirements mandated by rail standards and speci­fications. It implements an innovative data lock-step architecture and hardware-based voting mechanism that supports high performance modern processors, and is modular, scalable and designed to seamlessly accommodate additional I/O interfaces as well as upgraded processors that will be required throughout the product life cycle.

In addition, the ControlSafe Expansion Box Platform and ControlSafe Platform allow application developers to migrate existing application software with minimal modifications. Deployable in both wayside and carborne applications, Artesyn’s ControlSafe platforms are designed to support a broad range of I/O modules such as CAN, Ethernet, Ethernet Ring, UART, digital, analog and GPS/Wireless. Artesyn can also develop specific I/O solutions to meet unique application requirements.