At Critical Link, we’re very committed to quality. The applications our system-on-modules are used in aren’t trivial ones. They’re industrial, scientific, medical, telecommunications, defense, transportation… Quality, performance, and longevity all matter. Case in point illustrating our commitment are the results of some testing that one of our customers did on the MitySOM-5CSx. This SOM combines the Altera Cyclone V System on Chip (single or dual hard-core Cortex-A9 applications processors tightly integrated with FPGA fabric), memory subsystems, and onboard power supplies. It’s used for applications that require high throughput.
The customer that sent us their test results is part of the transportation industry, and the MitySOM-5CSx is being used in their Positive Train Control system. It goes without saying that this system is mission critical.
In doing their testing, the customer went through different use cases, modeling all three of the environments in which the MitySOM-5CSx would be deployed: an air-conditioned technical room; a non-air-conditioned technical room or indoor wayside; an outdoor wayside.
| Scenario One | Scenario 2 | Scenario 3 | |
| Failure per Hours | 8,92438E-07 | 1,12526E-06 | 9,85867E-07 |
| MTBF In Hours | 1,120,527 | 888,683 | 1,014,335 |
| MTBF in Days | 46,689 | 37,028 | 42,264 |
| MTBF in Years | 128 | 101 | 116 |
There are many assumptions that went into these tests, and I’m not going to get into them here. But based on these results, we’re able to say that, as a general rule of thumb, the MitySOM-5CSx has a Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) of 100 years.
Part of my heritage is Italian, and there’s an Italian toast, cent’anni, which expresses wishes for 100 years. I’m pretty proud that with the MitySOM-5CSx, Critical Link is achieving this.