Diamond Systems EPSM-10GX Managed 26 Port Ethernet Switch Modules with Two 10G SFI Ports

A drone, robot or ground vehicle often needs a managed switch shaped to its own enclosure, and designing one from switch silicon upwards takes time and specialist effort. The Diamond Systems EPSM-10GX series takes most of that work onto a module: a small Ethernet switch module that holds the switching core, packet memory and embedded software, so for many designs the carrier only adds magnetics, I/O connectors and an input voltage regulator.

Every EPSM-10GX offers 24 10/100/1000 copper ports with non-blocking wire-speed performance, 12 from PHYs on the module and 12 through QSGMII to a 12-port PHY on the carrier, plus two 10G SFI ports for SFP+ fibre or copper transceivers. Two Samtec ERF5 connectors of 120 pins each carry all power and data; designs of nine ports or fewer can use the first connector alone. Management runs through a web GUI over any port, a command-line interface over RS-232 and SNMP v1/v2c/v3, and the Layer 2+ base covers 8K MAC addresses, 4K VLANs, RSTP and MSTP, link aggregation and 8 QoS queues per port.

The series has two builds on our site. The EPSM-10GX runs Layer 2+ switching software for managed networks that do not need routing. The EPSM-10GX-L3 runs Layer 3 routing and switching software, adding IPv6 static routing, RFC 2328 OSPFv2 dynamic routing, RADIUS accounting and port and queue policers; its package also lists IEEE 1588 PTP, which needs an external precision clock and 1pps source on the carrier.

Each module runs from 5 V DC ±5% on the carrier and draws up to 20 W with all ports active. It operates from -40 to +85 °C with Diamond’s heat sink or heat spreader, and MIL-STD-202G shock and vibration resistance, as Diamond states it, suits vehicle use. Diamond provides a carrier design guide, a development kit with its EPS-24G4X carrier design files and a custom carrier board service, and names drones, ground and underwater vehicles and robots as target applications.