Sarsen By Numbers - Friday Facts from the Team at Sarsen Technology

12 – The number of years Sarsen Technology has been supplying embedded hardware solutions to our UK customers.

10 – The number of US-based manufacturers we currently represent.

5 – Exciting new board variants from VersaLogic released this year.

8 – Ways to contact us….
The obvious ones; email, phone and direct contact through the website.
The retro choice – fax and snail mail.
For the social butterfly – LinkedIn, Twitter or even a visit to the office here in Marlborough. We like visitors….

830 – The number of hits on our blog last month. We are actually very interesting….

3 – New COM Express modules from Extreme Engineering. For more info click here…

25 – days until Christmas!!!

5 – Twitter feeds from the team here at Sarsen.
@Laura_Sarsen
@Nigel_Sarsen
@Robbie_Sarsen
@Embedded_Tim
@Sarsen_Tech

24 – Current issue of NewsBytes, released today. There are lots of new technology releases from our manufacturing partners this month including OpenCL support for Altera Stratix V FPGA COTS boards, plus a new technical paper on "many-core" strategy written by Jeff Milrod, President of BittWare.

½ - The new S5-PCIe-HQ from BittWare is a half-length PCIe x8 card based on the Altera Stratix V FPGA. Check it out here.

2 – Number of times we have had cake in the office this week. Soon to be 3.

Have a great weekend!

Super Speed HFT with BittWare FPGA PCIe boards

High Frequency Trading is made even faster with FPGA Solutions from BittWare!

In layman’s terms, high-frequency trading (also known as HFT) is the buying and selling of stocks at super fast speeds, with the help of very powerful computers. Using complex algorithms, these computers can scan dozens of public and private marketplaces at the same time and execute millions of orders a second.

High-frequency trading is highly dependent on ultra-low latency as well as ever-faster analysis/data correlation. The products used also need to achieve maximum performance per watt to minimize energy and thermal requirements. BittWare offers a range of FPGA-based PCIe COTS solutions to address the challenges of developing financial applications.

BittWare’s Stratix V PCIe cards offer the industry’s highest performance FPGA for network and algorithm acceleration. These boards provide the ultimate in low latency with high performance FPGA transceivers (no external PHY) and optional TCP/IP offload engine. With maximum processing performance per watt to minimize energy and thermal requirements and QDR II/II+ combined with 10GigE straight to the FPGA (no conversion to XAUI) for ultra-low latency, BittWare’s PCIe boards are ideal for applications in the High Frequency Trading (HFT) market.

Fixnetix, global managed services provider for trading, market data and risk control, were the first fintech (financial technology) company in Europe to offer the Altera Stratix V FPGA on the BittWare PCI Express slot-cards. The Altera Stratix V FPGA with integrated 10GigE and BittWare PCIe Gen 3 slot card is ideal for iX-eCute, the Fixnetix FPGA firmware for nanosecond trading and pre-trade risk checks across multiple asset classes. BittWare PCI Express slot-cards are the hardware boards that iX-eCute operates on whilst Altera Stratix is the industry's highest performance FPGA with over 1 TeraFLOPS of processing.

If you would like more information about how the BittWare hardware could work in your application please give us a call on +44 1672 511166, or drop us an email!

Military Simulator Technology from UEI

When someone says “Simulator” most people immediately think “Flight Simulator”.

However, simulators are now also used to train ‘drivers’ on fire trucks, tanks, military ground vehicles and even conventional and nuclear power plants. Military trainers in particular are basing much of their driver training on very complex and realistic simulators.

The simulator can provide a realistic experience of driving a tank, personnel carrier, or MRAP in a convoy at night while under attack. These are very real conditions that are very difficult to train for in actual vehicles. The combination of small footprint and real-time update speed make the United Electronic Industries (UEI) RACKtangle an ideal ground vehicle simulator solution.

Interestingly, UEI’s wide selection of I/O capabilities is often more critical in ground simulators than flight. In addition to the standard analog and digital I/O, most military ground simulators also require a combination of serial, CAN, ARINC-429 and/or MIL-STD-1553. UEI offer support for all these functions through their range of boards and chassis.

The UEI RACKtangle I/O chassis has been selected by FlightSafety International as the computer-based I/O hardware for future flight simulators. The UEI system provides the interface between the controlling computers and the simulator’s various systems including Avionics Instrument Control (AIC), Control Loading and Motion (CLM) and Flight Deck I/O (FDK). In PowerDNA mode the system can be almost arbitrarily large - UEI have been used on military aircraft flight simulators requiring greater than 7000 I/O points!!

For more information on how UEI can work in your simulator application, please give us a call on +44 1672 511166, or drop us an email with your requirements.

Thanksgiving - What does it mean??

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the USA. It’s a holiday that British people haven’t really adopted, and don’t really understand or appreciate. In fact, a lot of what we know of Thanksgiving has been learned from ‘Friends’!

As a representative of 10 US-based manufacturers, we are always keen to learn a bit more about their traditions, and to understand why they are taking 2 days off work!!

In 1621, the Mayflower pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians shared a feast, after their first successful autumn harvest, which is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies.

In 1863 Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday, in a proclamation entreating all Americans to ask God to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.”

Today, Thanksgiving is a time to, well, give thanks! Although it has lost some of its original significance, it’s still one of the most important holidays in the year. Thanksgiving now centres on cooking and sharing a bountiful meal with family and friends, and sharing what you are thankful for.

There isn’t really any reason why the UK shouldn’t celebrate a form of Thanksgiving Day. Halloween is becoming a huge occasion in the UK, but I think we might have picked the wrong American tradition to adopt.

Because Thanksgiving isn’t based on any religion, unlike Christmas or Easter, it’s an opportunity to get together and do the one thing we don’t do enough of – give thanks for everything we love and are grateful for, whether its friends, family, pets or a stable job.

And what is worth celebrating more than that?

Happy Thanksgiving to our American friends and colleagues.

SUMIT - I/O Expansion Module Development Made Easier....

Stackable Unified Module Interconnect Technology (SUMIT ™) is a stackable, form-factor independent expansion format that includes both high and low speed bus signals. The SUMIT spec is targeted for products using state-of-the-art serial buses and legacy chipset expansion buses all in the same form factor.

The specification is an I/O-centric approach, which defines the connector and stacking method, but it doesn’t address the specific location requirements for the connectors on any specific form factor boards. Only the location (placement) of one connector relative to the other is specified, to ensure proper routing of signals that are passed from one connector to another as they continue up the stack.

A SUMIT stack is designed to be processor independent, as it focuses on bus and interconnect technology rather than any single processor or DSP architecture. Two connectors are used on each module, SUMIT A and SUMIT B. These connectors carry multiple high-speed serial PCIe and USB 2.0 buses and include Low Pin Count (LPC), Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), and SMBus/I2C for legacy requirements. While the optional SUMIT B connector carries mostly PCIe interfaces, the SUMIT A connector carries a single x1 PCIe and four USB 2.0 buses, as well as the legacy interfaces.

With no hardware configuration needed to route multiple interfaces, SUMIT gives designers a solution for creating embedded expansion modules that require high-speed interfaces as well as legacy support.

VersaLogic's EBX, EPIC and PC/104 SUMIT platforms are combined with an optional ISA connector to support legacy PC/104 expansion modules. The signals available on VersaLogic's CPU boards include PCI Express lanes, low speed signals such as LPC and SPI, and legacy USB and ISA signals. VersaLogic currently offer 3 SBCs featuring optional SUMIT expansion –

• Komodo - A dual core SBC on a SUMIT-EPIC™ platform. The Komodo features a very high performance Intel® Core™2 Duo processor, dual Gigabit Ethernet, and high performance integrated video.


• Ocelot - An Intel Atom™ based embedded computer in a SUMIT-104 format. The Ocelot uses an industrial temperature Atom version to provide high performance (1.6 GHz) at very low power (7 Watts). The Ocelot, at only 90 mm x 96 mm, is compatible with most SUMIT and PC/104 expansion boards, and is available in both standard (0º to +60ºC) and extended (-40º to +85ºC) temperature versions.


• 'Brand New' Copperhead - The Copperhead is a high-performance embedded computer powered by a 3rd Generation Intel Core i7 processor. Based on the industry-standard EBX format, the Copperhead is available in either quad- or dual-core models (17 to 45W power dissipation). It features several heat management configurations and offers options for I/O interfaces and interface connectors.

VersaLogic Komodo

For more information please give us a call on +44 1672 511166 or drop me an email and we'll answer any questions you might have.

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Whats new? Intel Core i7 and Freescale based Embedded SBCs from Extreme Engineering!

In the last 3 months, Extreme Engineering has released a host of brand new boards. From COMe to VPX, they offer solutions for a variety of applications.
 
The XPand6104 is a natural convection cooled small form factor system supporting the XPedite7450 Intel® Core™ i7 processor rugged COM Express module. An Ethernet port, two serial ports, a USB port, graphics port, and a SATA port from the XPedite7450 are brought out to standard commercial connectors on the front panel.

XPand6104

The XCalibur4440 is a high-performance, 6U VPX, multiprocessing, single board computer that is ideal for ruggedized systems requiring high bandwidth processing and low power consumption. Supporting 2nd generation Intel® Core™ i7 processors and 3rd generation Intel Core i7 processors the XCalibur4440 delivers enhanced performance and efficiency for today's network information processing and embedded computing applications.

XCalibur4440

The XPedite5650 is a ruggedized COM Express mini module (55 mm x 84 mm) that supports an enhanced Type 10 pinout. With four PowerPC e500mc cores running at up to 1.5 GHz, the P2041 delivers enhanced performance and efficiency for today's network information processing and other embedded computing applications. There are plenty of I/O ports, including one copper Gigabit Ethernet port, a single x2 PCIe port, two x1 PCIe ports, two USB 2.0 ports and two SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports.

XPedite5650

The XCalibur4402 is a high-performance, 6U CompactPCI, multiprocessing, single board computer, supporting Supports 2nd generation Intel® Core™ i7 processors and 3rd generation Intel Core i7 processors. The XCalibur4402 provides up to 16 GB of DDR3-1600 ECC SDRAM in two channels, two PrPMC/PrXMC slots, 32 MB of NOR flash, and up to 128 GB of NAND flash. 

XCalibur4402

X-ES offers the widest range of commercial and ruggedized 3rd Gen Intel Core i7 processor solutions for embedded applications. As the UK distributor for X-ES we can help with any questions you may have.

Please give us a call on +44 1672 511166 to discuss your application, or email us!

Tech Source in New Deal with RunTime, A Sarsen Facelift, and a Birthday!

Today is Tims' birthday.  

No, we aren't going to mention ages! Happy birthday Tim.

This week Tech Source have announced their new partnership with RunTime Computing Solutions to accelerate GPGPU (general purpose graphics processing unit) development on its Condor 3000 XMC video graphics cards. This will make it much easier for customers using Tech Source boards to develop high performance GPGPU applications in the OpenCL world. For more info please contact us.

The Sarsen Technology LinkedIn page has had a bit of a facelift. Follow our page to keep up to date with new products and news from the team.

 

Remember Remember.......

Sandwiched in between the festivities of Hallowe'en and Christmas is Bonfire Night. A time to remember the Gunpowder plot of 1605, when Guy Fawkes was caught guarding explosives hidden under the House of Lords, in an attempt to assassinate King James I of England.

Fireworks date back to 7th century China, where they were invented. Also known as ‘Explosive Pyrotechnics’, fireworks are actually designed not to explode. To give a good visual show the ingredients need to burn slowly, in order to produce the colours and sparkles found in today’s displays. You learn something new every day! 

But don't forget, while that Youtube video of the guy shooting fireworks from various parts of his body is really funny, fireworks are dangerous, so be safe this weekend.