Understanding the VPX ecosystem and determining how standards fit together is vital to achieving key system design objectives. Why? Because requirements and technology are constantly changing. Navigating the VPX ecosystem is like biking several miles on old terrain. You have a bike and supplies, but are they the right tools should new obstacles arise? Though VPX related standards are built on solid foundations, new standards dovetail in as new requirements come to market or become more practical. Like the old bike path, where new roads or detours may have developed, learning what these new standards are, which are ratified and what problems they solve make it easier to identify which specifications can work together and which are no longer needed. With the VPX suite of standards, associated embedded computing standards and its compliant building block products, the systems designer has the ability to architect a wide range of rugged high performance solutions. For example, a new generation of high-speed transceiver cards using high performance FPGAs relies on a range of inter-related VPX standards. Some of these standards focus on high power and high temperature related requirements, such as the recent ANSI/VITA 48.8 AFT, which solves the problem of high power and high heat density efficiently, economically and practically.