T'was the night before Christmas..... by Sarsen Technology!

T'was the night before Christmas, we were still at the shop.
The town was deserted; you could hear a pin drop.
Our families were at home, the egg-nog was flowing,
And outside the window it had just started snowing.

T'here was still work to do, and orders to place
We were working away at a furious pace!
Sarsen Technology was so busy in December,
When last this much to do we couldn’t remember!

T'he team was still smiling (it was more of a scowl),
And our moods were becoming increasingly foul.
When outside the office a roar did sound,
An engine, getting closer. Our heads turned around….

T'he moon was shining on the new fallen snow,
And it lit up the ground and the houses below.
Then what to our tired eyes should appear?
The boss parking his car, full of good cheer!

More jolly than Santa, he strode up the stairs,
And entered the office to a faceful of stares.
Under our breaths we asked “Why's he so cheerful?”
And why was he here? We were suddenly fearful...

Had we not done enough of the workload this eve?
We’d nearly completed what we set out to achieve.
We had no idea about what was his game,
Then to our surprise he called us by name!

Now Laura! Now Colleen! Now Angela and Tim!
And of course not forgetting Robbie and Lynn!
You’ve worked really hard, and you deserve a big cheer,
Take some time off, come back after New Year!

As we packed up our stuff, and put on our coats,
Our hats and our gloves, and wrapped scarves round our throats,
We heard him exclaim, as he drove out of sight,
"Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from everyone at Sarsen Technology!
We will be back in the office on Wednesday 2nd January.

Putting the spotlight on Danville Signal Processing

Danville Signal Processing, Inc. was founded in 1998 to manufacture products for the communication, audio, military and instrumentation markets using digital signal processing (DSP) technology as their core technology base. Sarsen Technology has represented Danville in the UK for over 10 years.

Solutions include:

• COTS DSP Boards and I/O Modules
• Embedded PCB assemblies
• DSP and FPGA combination solutions
• Standalone products
• Rack mount systems
• Custom board solutions

The dspblok family of products combine an Analog Devices SHARC DSP with the supporting circuits necessary to implement a powerful DSP Function Module.

Danville Signal's dspstak™ Engines are available for the latest Analog Devices SHARC® family processors. These modules generally consist of a DSP Processor, memory, power supplies and standard digital I/O such as RS-232 and USB.

The dsprak™ high performance audio platform is a semi-custom solution for OEMs. The basic 1U system supports 2 to 8 analog and digital inputs and 8 analog and digital outputs. Additional motherboards can be stacked to create larger systems with up to 32 channels.

Danville have also have gathered a number of DSP resources, ADI data sheets and application notes, DSP-related web sites and online tutorials to assist you in your DSP applications. They will continue to add information and resources to their website, to assist developers in gaining the DSP knowledge necessary to make their designs better, faster and more reliable.

Their goal is to become a repository of SHARC Related Resources and Reference Material for the DSP Developer. If you have a DSP trick, SHARC-related Article or Web Site that you'd like to add to Danville's reference library, please contact us and we will be happy to add it to the collection.

If you have any questions about Danville, or any of our other product lines, please give us a call on +44 1672 511166, or drop us an email.

The Sarsen Technology Christmas Party - In Photos

Christmas comes but once a year, and the Sarsen Technology Christmas party was the perfect way to get us all in the festive spirit.

The gang at Komedia, Bath
L-R - Angela, Nigel, Tim, Laura, Lynn and Colleen

There was someone important missing from the party - Robbie couldn't make it unfortunately, but we tried our best to enjoy the evening without his sparkling company....

Angela and Nigel

Tim and Colleen

Laura and Tim

Clive and Lynn

We all had a good time on Friday, thanks very much to Colleen for organising a great night out!!

It's the most wonderful time of the year.....

Yes, its Christmas party time again.

Tonight the Sarsen Team are off to Komedia in Bath to eat, drink and get merry. I mean, be merry.

Its a good time to review the highs and lows of 2012; it's been an interesting year, with successes in new markets, a host of new boards from all our manufacturers, and loads of new brand new technology to get our little heads around.

But there's no rest for the wicked; there will be even more happening in the New Year!

Thanks very much to our manufacturers for their continued support, and we look forward to another exciting year in 2013.

Have a great weekend!

The Twelve Days of Christmas. Sarsen Style.

Today is the twelfth of the twelfth of the twelfth. So we're carrying on the theme and bringing you the Twelve Days of Christmas, in our own special way.

(Feel free to join in....)

On the first day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

A BittWare Anemone

On the second day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

On the third day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

On the fourth day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

On the fifth day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Five Copperheads,

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

On the sixth day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Six RACKtangle chassis

Five Copperheads,

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

Well done guys, half way through....

On the seventh day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Seven Half-length Stratix V boards,

Six RACKtangle chassis

Five Copperheads,

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

On the eighth day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Eight Amazon Streamstors,

Seven Half-length Stratix V boards,

Six RACKtangle chassis

Five Copperheads,

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

On the ninth day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Nine Tech Source Condors

Eight Amazon Streamstors,

Seven Half-length Stratix V boards,

Six RACKtangle chassis

Five Copperheads,

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

On the tenth day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Ten General Standards boards,

Nine Tech Source Condors

Eight Amazon Streamstors,

Seven Half-length Stratix V boards,

Six RACKtangle chassis

Five Copperheads,

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

Nearly there, keep going!

On the eleventh day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Eleven Iguanas,

Ten General Standards boards,

Nine Tech Source Condors

Eight Amazon Streamstors,

Seven Half-length Stratix V boards,

Six RACKtangle chassis

Five Copperheads,

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

On the twelfth day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Twelve Trenton Backplanes,

Eleven Iguanas,

Ten General Standards boards,

Nine Tech Source Condors

Eight Amazon Streamstors,

Seven Half-length Stratix V boards,

Six RACKtangle chassis

Five Copperheads,

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone!

Hurrah! Next up, We Wish You a Merry Christmas.......

Sarsen Technology Christmas Opening Hours

Christmas is creeping ever closer....

Time is running out to get your orders placed, so its good news that the Sarsen Technology team will be available to help you right up until Friday 21st December.

Our offices will be closed from Monday 24th December until Tuesday 1st January.

We will be back in the office on Wednesday 2nd January.

Please let us know if you need anything before then by calling the office on +44 1672 511166, or emailing us - info@sarsen.net.

Sarsen Technology Manufacturer Profile - Tech Source, Inc.

Established in 1987, Tech Source has been a pioneer in high performance computer graphics hardware solutions for 25 years.

The company has evolved over the years, now serving several markets that include Air Traffic Control/Management (ATC/ATM), avionics, military and embedded systems with several COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) and custom products.
The product range includes graphics, imaging and video capture boards, H.264 encoders and high compression video recorders.

From designing graphics processing units (GPUs) and high compression encoders to FPGA targeted special graphics/imaging algorithms the company has a broad range of knowledge and offers product customizations and new product delivery in a matter of months.

Tech Source XMC and PMC graphics products can be used with most Single Board Computers (SBCs) in various form factors such as VME, CPCI, and ATCA that are most often found in military and defense applications.

The Tech Source Condor series of embedded products for Mil/Aero applications consists of high performance COTS XMC or VPX form factor graphics and video solutions. Air or rugged conduction cooled variants offer Open GL/3D, H.264, video windowing plus GPGPU capabilities. Linux, Windows and RTOS drivers are supported. A key product is the Condor 3000x which is based on the AMD Radeon 6760 GPU and offers exceptional performance with immersive desktop-level 3D graphics and outstanding multimedia features.

For more information on Tech Source or any of our other manufacturers please give us a call on +44 1672 511166, or email us.

www.sarsen.net

Sarsen Technology is here if you need us, Santa!

Things are ramping up at the North Pole....

On the run up to Christmas Eve, Santa has to go through his list of names, and check it twice, to see who has been naughty and who has been nice. He then has to decide which toy each child deserves. It’s a long process, and it could be much simpler, using BLITzEN – the BittWare Low latency Intelligent Toy Evaluation Network.

It’s based on the Altera Stratix V FPGA, provides CPU offload, the highest performance transceivers , and with maximum processing performance per watt to minimize energy and thermal requirements it’s perfect for Santa’s busy Workshop, as it helps him to determine not just what children want but rather what they deserve.

Those Reindeer are an essential part of the process, and Santa knows he needs to make sure they are happy and performing at their best. The UEI Cube is small and rugged, and can be used to measure the tension on their specially adapted harnesses using its strain gauge layers, so Santa knows the second there are any problems. That sleigh is heavy!

Flying around the world in a reindeer-drawn sleigh would be made much easier with a display system running on the Copperhead Core i7 EBX board from VersaLogic. Its performance level allows for the integration of multiple high-bandwidth functions, such as digital signal processing and real-time video processing. The Copperhead features a high-speed memory interface, up to 16 GB on-board RAM capacity, and three independent display outputs, so Santa can check his route, run his aforementioned naughty-or-nice list, and still video-chat with the sleigh-port, an underground facility run by Elves that serves as a command and control centre. 

Phew! Its a busy time for the guys and girls at the North Pole, but don't worry Santa, Sarsen Technology is here to help. Give us a call on +44 1672 511166 or drop us an email!!

BittWare's Anemone - A New Approach to Floating Point DSP

Ah-ne-MO-nee
It’s a word that is quite often mis-pronounced.
It’s not Ane-No-Me. Or worse – An-En-ema. Definitely not that!

BittWare’s first generation Anemone chip, the Anemone104 (AN104) is a completely scalable multicore processor with 16 eCores that provide a total sustained performance of 19.2 GFLOPS while consuming only 1 Watt of core power.

Featuring the Epiphany architecture from Adapteva, the BittWare Anemone combines the best assets of both FPGA and floating point DSP technology, thereby offering a completely new approach to floating point digital signal processing. The FPGA handles all the memory, I/O interfacing, protocol processing, and special functions, in addition to any computational tasks it may perform. This leaves the Anemone free to perform the complex processing tasks that DSPs are ideal for.

The AN104 features an internal high-throughput mesh network, with separate data paths for on-chip and off-chip communications. Total on-chip, inter-core bandwidth is 76.8 GBytes/sec full duplex, with an additional 8 GBytes/sec of off-chip bandwidth.

The BittWare Anemone Evaluation Kit provides a cost-effective way to begin evaluating the Anemone co-processor for FPGAs, featuring an Anemone104 and Altera Stratix III FPGA based evaluation board - ready to use out of the box, with the Ubuntu Linux OS and Anemone development tools installed on an included laptop.

This is pretty new technology – if you would like more information give the Sarsen sales team a call on +44 1672 511166 or send us an email.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas…. With the help of our lovely Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund Christmas Cards

As well as all the other stuff we get up to here at Sarsen, it’s very important to us that we support charities where we can. This year we have chosen to support the Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund by buying all our Christmas cards from their wonderful collection.

The Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund (PCRF) is a national charity dedicated to supporting research to improve diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic cancer. It was founded in April 2004 by Maggie Blanks, following the death of her husband Alan from the disease in May 2003. The PCRF directly fund research into the disease by offering grants to researchers in universities, research institutes and hospitals in the UK and Ireland.

Pancreatic cancer has the lowest survival rate of all cancers – just 3% of those diagnosed in the UK survive for 5 years. It accounts for 5% of cancer deaths but attracts very little research funding. You can find out about the work the Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund are doing in their newsletter.

You can buy their Christmas cards here, and the great thing is that with every PCRF Christmas card you send, as well as supporting them financially, you'll be making people aware of the charity and the world-class research it's funding to defeat pancreatic cancer. There are other ways to support the Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund - Nigel is also offering his support by volunteering to help with research into pancreatic cancer at St Barts hospital in London. Find out more here.

Why not take a leaf out of our book and support a charity this Christmas - it'll give you a warm fuzzy glow faster than a hot toddy by an open fire!