VITA History

Timeline

The architectural concepts of VMEbus are based on the VERSAbus developed by Motorola in the late 1970s. Motorola’s European Microsystems group in Munich, West Germany proposed the development of a VERSAbus-like product line of computers and controllers based on the Eurocard mechanical standard. To demonstrate the concept, Max Loesel and Sven Rau developed three prototype boards: (1) a 68000 CPU card, (2) a dynamic memory card, and (3) a static memory card. They named the new bus VERSAbus-E, which was later renamed "VME" by Lyman Hevle, then VP of the Motorola Microsystems Operation (and later the founder of VITA). While VME has no official definition, it is commonly thought to be the acronym for VERSAmodule Europe. Motorola, Mostek, and Signetics agreed to jointly develop and support the new bus architecture in early 1981.

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