17. Hardware

REDAC consists of a large number of custom printed circuit boards (PCB) designs made by anabrid. The KiCad EDA software was used to produce the schematics and layouts. The PCBs host carefully selected third party analog, digital or mixed signal chips. Next to PCBs, REDAC consists of metal support structures in standard industry format (DIN subrack kits, IEC 60529) made of aluminium or steel as well as industry-standard cable/connectors of various types.

The whole schematics of the REDAC computer require roughly 200 to 300 pages when being printed out. The circuits are versioned, this versioning is carefully tracked in the firmware development so there are lowlevel “drivers” for every piece of hardware developed (despite, of course, old hardware revisions are typically deprecated).

Some REDAC circuits have international patents granted or pending.

Readers interested in the REDAC hardware should read the high-level description of Architecture Reference first. It is important to note that, despite being modular, the whole REDAC system should be seen as a unity. This means that when dealing with a complex system such as REDAC from a hardware perspective, one must assume leaky abstraction or a violation of seperation of concerns. For instance, despite an iREDAC should be an independent unit standing for itself, in REDAC several iREDACs are steered by a single digital SuperController and thus there is certain interdependence. The same might be true due to shared power supplies, for instance.

For schematics access, please contact the person who is/was responsible for purchasing your REDAC setup, your administrator/operator or the manufacturer, anabrid.