It's Tuesday, and the Spotlight is on Trenton Systems....

Trenton Systems was established in 1977, and has become a global leader in the design and manufacture of board level products and fully integrated computer systems that address the critical needs of industries such as defense, test and measurement and financial trading.

Trenton Systems board level manufacturing facilities are located in Utica, New York, and the system integration, sales and engineering teams are located at the Trenton headquarters in Gainesville, Georgia.

Trenton delivered some of the first single board computers with advanced dual-processor architectures. They are also one of the founding member companies of the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group® (PICMG®), and played a key leadership role with regard to writing and publishing industry standards such as PICMG 1.0 and PICMG 1.3.

The financial trading industry is an exciting, fast moving environment, which requires high performance products, expandability and long-life cycles – not to mention enclosure customisations that satisfy environmental variables!
Perfect then, that Trenton offer exactly that!

There are some significant advantages to choosing a Trenton Systems Single Board Computer, Backplane or Embedded Motherboard -

• Customer-driven computing solutions satisfy the most demanding requirements
• Board-level products designed, manufactured and supported in the United States
• Total BIOS control allows modifications that support complex integrated systems
• Backplane designs allow unique ISA, PCI, PCI Express 1.0 and 2.0 configurations
• Five-year factory warranty on all SBCs, backplanes & embedded motherboards
• Board-level products utilize long-life components for 7+ year product availability
• Manufacturing and computer integration facilities are ISO 9001:2008 Certified

For more information on the benefits of using a Trenton Systems product in your application, please call the sales team on +44 1672 511166, or email us! We look forward to hearing from you.

What exactly is High Speed Financial Trading?

It's 'Financial February' here at Sarsen, so we thought it was a good idea to describe exactly what Financial Trading is, specifically the High Speed Financial Trading that we've been focussing on over the last few weeks.

In layman’s terms, it’s the use of very powerful computers programmed with sophisticated instructions to trade stocks and make profits from minute price variations that occur in less than a second.

Simples!

High Speed Financial Trading, or High Frequency Trading (HFT) doesn’t actually have anything to do with ‘investing’ as we know it, it’s simply a set of computing instructions that react to information much faster than any human can. These trades can make significantly less than 1p per share, but if you add up the millions of trades per day you’re looking at a respectable chunk of money!

‘Pretty complex stuff’, I hear you say...

Fortunately BittWare has designed and developed a growing family of PCIe format Altera Stratix V FPGA hardware which makes it easier for customers to create system solutions for financial acceleration.

The challenges in this space are quite unique:

• Require ultra-low latency feed handling
• Faster analysis/data correlation
• Maximum performance/watt (minimize energy and thermal requirements)
• Desire for scalable architecture to enable “FPGA Farm” implementation

‘Low-Latency’ is the real buzz word for HFT, with the solution offering the lowest latency being the most attractive to prospective customers.

The BittWare S5-PCIe-HQ half-length PCIe board, which features the Altera Stratix V FPGA, provides systems developers with a high level of system integration, and high-performance network processing, signal processing, and data acquisition possibilities.

For more information get in touch with the Sarsen team on +44 1672 511166, or email us – info@sarsen.net

Out and about with Sarsen Technology - this week the Low Latency Summit 2013, London!

So it's been another busy week for the Sarsen Technology sales team.

Alongside our friends at BittWare we participated at the Low Latency Summit in London, which gave us a great platform to show off the new half length Stratix V PCIe board from BittWare, and tell everyone all about the Altera OpenCL support (and special pricing!) for BittWare FPGA hardware.

Robbie and Nigel at the Low Latency Summit Feb 19th 2013

It was a well attended event, with some great networking opportunities for new and existing customers, as well as some thought provoking seminars focussing on how low latency, cloud and big data technologies are combining to support automated trading.

The Low Latency Summit has been running in London since 2010 at the America Square Conference Centre. It's a modern building with a genuine bit of history too, as the original London Wall, (one of the largest construction projects carried out in Roman Britain) runs right through the venue, providing a fascinating and unique feature.

The Roman Wall at the America Square Conference Centre

This is the second time Sarsen have attended the show, and it won't be the last. Check out the photos below!

Nigel and Jeff Milrod (CEO- BittWare) at the Low Latency Summit 2013

Nigel and Jeff chatting to attendees at the Low Latency Summit 2013

Ron Huizen (VP Technology, BittWare) demonstrating OpenCL support for BittWare FPGA boards

Something lovely in the post this week!

As a reflection of the Sarsen Teams’ hard work in promoting their 5 newest boards VersaLogic have gifted us some delicious Domaine Drouhin Oregon Pinot Noir. Their Pinot noir bottlings are frequently awarded "Outstanding" scores from the Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate critics, so I’m sure it will pass the taste test with our educated palates!

Thanks to VersaLogic for our lovely wine!

A Little Bit of History
Established in 1987, Domaine Drouhin Oregon is owned by famed Burgundy producer, Maison Joseph Drouhin. Hand-crafted by fourth generation winemaker, Veronique Drouhin-Boss, the distinctive Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays of Domaine Drouhin are prized for their elegance, balance and finesse, as well as their ability to age. Ninety acres of the 225-acre estate are now planted, with over 3100 vines per acre.

VersaLogic manufacture a range of rugged industrial computers, designed for embedded applications across a variety of markets.
The latest boards cover the complete form factor range available from VersaLogic.
Tiger – VL-EPM-24 – PC/104 with Intel Atom Z5xx processor
Iguana – VL-EPIC-25 – EPIC with Intel Atom D525 or D425 processor
Copperhead – VL-EBX-41 – EBX with Intel Core i7 processor (quad or dual core)
Newt – VL-EPIC-17 – EPIC with Vortex86DX processor
Falcon – VL-EPU-2610 – EPU, based on COM Express Mini, with Atom E6*0T processor

For more information please give us a call on +44 1672 511166 or drop us an email.

Sarsen Spotlight Series ... This week, All You Ever Wanted To Know About 'Our Tim!'

Tim Norris
Tim's Twitter Feed
Tim's LinkedIn Profile
NAME – Tim Norris
ROLE – Sales Account Manager
TIME SERVED – 7 years

Tim is one of our longest serving inmates, and has been a part of the Sarsen sales team for nearly 7 years. Tim manages some of our biggest accounts, across a variety of market sectors. He has been focussing on our HFT customers recently, winning some significant business with the BittWare Altera Stratix V boards.

Because he’s been here so long, Tim is a walking repository of useful information. (Mostly.) He is able to help with queries about any of our 10 manufacturers, and is pretty handy with a screwdriver when the situation arises and we have to get intimate with the hardware!

Tim’s Hobbies
Tim has recently learnt to ride a bike….. down hills, through mud, over ramps. He’s a keen mountain biker, and spends his weekends on 2 wheels around Wiltshire and Wales. Tim is also captain of his local pool team. When he has a spare 5 minutes, he takes pictures with one of his many cameras.

Tim’s Favourite things -

Favourite music – (Very) Loud Guitar Rock
Favourite Colour – Black
Favourite Food – Mexican
Favourite Movie – True Romance
Favourite book – Jaws (Peter Benchley)
Favourite flavour Crisps – Smoky Bacon

Final Insight
What did you want to be when you were little? - A ZooKeeper

If someone were to make a movie about your life, who would you hope to play you? – Hugh Jackman.
(We actually did a scientific experiment on an unnamed app, and Hugh Jackman was the first name out. Tim – “He wouldn’t have to work out much more to be as muscly as me”).

Every Tuesday we shine the spotlight on an area of our lives at Sarsen Technology; whether it's a type of technology, one of our manufacturers, or as we have today, giving you a peek into the (sometimes strange) world of our staff!

If you'd like to get to know us even better, give us a call on +44 1672 511166, or drop us an email. We look forward to hearing from you!

'Financial February' from Sarsen Technology!

You’ve reached the Sarsen Blog. Lucky you!

If it’s your first visit, welcome. If you’ve been here before, welcome back! If you accidentally clicked the wrong link you should stick around… You might learn something!

We started 2013 with Green Month. January has seen our blog feature some pretty cool technology involved in renewable energy, global warming data collection, utility monitoring and wind turbines, as well as our super-informative Spotlight Series.

This month is ‘Financial February’. We’ll be bringing you all the latest product news for the high speed financial trading market, available from our 10 US manufacturers. We will also be sharing all the insider news and views from our exhibition stand at the Low Latency Summit on February 19th in London. We’ll be on stand 105 alongside BittWare and their latest Altera Stratix V FPGA hardware and software technology, with a very special feature showcasing the OpenCL tools designed for low-latency financial trading.

If that wasn’t enough we’ll also be shining the Spotlight on another member of the Sarsen team, and sharing some more trade secrets about the exciting technology we are lucky enough to be involved with.

See you on Tuesday for the first Sarsen Spotlight post of February 2013!

Green Month Feature - Wind Turbine Technology from United Electronic Industries

Did you know that the UK is the windiest country in Europe?
*Insert your own joke here*

Wind has been the fastest growing renewable energy source in the last decade. China plans a 60% increase in the next three years, and the US a massive six-fold jump by 2030! The EU wants to produce 20% of its energy through renewables by 2020, with the majority coming from wind. One wind turbine can generate up to 6.5 million units of electricity each year: enough to run a computer for 2,250 years. Thats quite a long time.

It's really very simple -

• Wind turbines convert kinetic energy from the wind into mechanical energy.
• The blades catch the wind and turn the rotor, which is connected to the nacelle which houses all the workings for the turbine.
• The rotor turns a shaft which is connected to the gear box.
• The gear box is connected to a generator which converts the mechanical energy into electricity.
• The electricity is then sent to the National Grid.

With all this going on, it's really important to ensure these turbines operate safely, so strict monitoring is necessary. This usually involves a variety of sensors, including accelerometers, encoders, temperature sensors, oil/liquid level sensors, particle counter, voltage, current and humidity sensors.

UEI Cubes, and in particular, the UEIPAC, are ideal solutions for monitoring and controlling wind power generators. They are powerful enough to provide control for everything from blade angle to output voltage, and log everything from wind speed to power output. The UEIPAC’s easy access to Ethernet means it can easily run as a slave to a primary host PC when desired, but can take over and run stand-alone if anything happens to the primary communications link. The Cube’s rugged environmental specification eliminates the need for any heating or cooling in the control rack.

The standard UEIPAC cubes are tested from -40° to +85° C, at 50 g shock, 5 g vibration and altitudes up to 70,000 feet. All the I/O is also fully isolated from the controller, so the UEIPAC is almost totally immune to the glitches and spikes commonly seen in the grounds of an industrial environment.

We've also been speaking to customers who use UEI’s Cubes and RACKtangles as remote communications links in wind farms, where the system needs to consolidate RS-485 data from a series of turbines and send the data to the supervisory computer.

If you are working on an application that might benefit from a little more knowledge please get in touch with the Sarsen team on +44 1672 511166, or drop us an email.

Have a great weekend!