How REDI Addresses Cooling How, then, does REDI address the cooling issue?
As with all VITA standards, VITA 48 comprises a number of disparate but related elements (Figure 1). It is expected that all will have been approved by the end of 2006. In its comprehensiveness, REDI goes beyond the work previously done by the VITA 34 working group. While VITA 34 was designed to accommodate liquid cooling, VITA 48 addresses it specifically. Because REDI deals with all forms of cooling within a single standard, it embraces common mechanical design approaches. This makes it simpler for manufacturers to create single board designs that can be cooled by convection, by conduction or by liquid, an important step forward. One of the first things that REDI does is increase the maximum pitch between modules from the IEEE 1101 standard of 0.8 in. to 1.0 in. This increase is designed to do three things. First, it allows for the greater PCB thickness demanded by today’s sophisticated multi-layer boards, which can reach up to 24 layers. Second, the greater pitch makes it possible f
