Introducing the BORA from Dave

So, we have some exciting news for you today....

Our newest addition to the product line, Dave, has released their newest product - the Bora.

This is very exciting, because it could save you development time, resources and physical space, as well as give you increased flexibility, improved performance and a diverse set of peripherals.

The Bora is based on the recent Xilinx "Zynq" XC7Z010 / XC7Z020 Dual Cortex-A9 + Artix-7 FPGA application processor. Customers will benefit from using a compact solution that includes both a CPU and an FPGA, avoiding complexities on the carrier PCB. The Artix-7 FPGA integrated on-chip means you can develop your embedded system without sacrificing performance. The industrial temperature operation also enables designers to create rugged products suitable for harsh mechanical and thermal environments.

The BORA is suitable for a variety of high-end applications such as:

• Medical instrumentation
• Advanced communication systems
• Critical real-time operations
• Safety/Security applications

If you have any questions, or you'd like to know more about the new Bora from Dave, please give us a call on +44 1672 511166, or email us: info@sarsen.net

Sun is Shining, Weather is Sweet....

That’s right. Your eyes aren’t deceiving you, it’s not dark; it’s just your sunglasses. The pain on the back of your neck and shoulders is actually sunburn. It’s summer, people, and we’ve finally had some pretty fabulous weather, with the UK racking up temperatures hotter than Barbados and Tahiti at times.

But take a minute to actually think about the sun. As well as being the giver of tan lines and facilitator of days at the beach it’s also the closest star to Earth, (practically next door at only 149,600,000 km away), and is about 4.6 billion years old. We actually know quite a lot about it, thanks to solar imaging.

BittWare was involved in a project to design a solar image processing system for one of their customers. The processing requirements were quite specific – the customer was looking for adaptive image processing using multi-channel correlation. This called for a very large multi-processor system with a huge amount of I/O bandwidth, extensive integration work, and a very efficient cooling system.

 

BittWare’s solution included ten DSP-based boards, supplying 80 DSPs, and a custom designed chassis to provide efficient cooling. They drew on decades of expertise in digital signal processing design, enabling them to create an 80-DSP system that functioned with no issues, which also cooled properly. Although the hardware used was COTS hardware, significant application-specific design work was needed to ultimately provide the final system to their customer.

Enjoy the sun this weekend!

Trenton and Matrox Provide AV Hardware for Australian Grand Prix

Are you sitting comfortably? I’m going to tell you a true story.

The Australian Grand Prix Corporation needed a high performance system to monitor all the camera feeds and logistical information from around the track. It was a big task, so they enlisted the help of P.A People to provide a perfect solution.

That solution came in the shape of a TVC4401 video wall controller system from Trenton Systems. The system was powered by three Matrox Mura MPX-4/4 boards, each featuring four outputs and four inputs, and two MPX-V16s, which capture up to 16 NTSC/PAL/SECAM video channels each. During the race the Mura cards captured feeds from 10 inputs including lap times, race position, etc, and 32 track cameras, managing their display across 12 Samsung 460UX monitors in a 6x2 configuration.

The P.A. People Managing Director Chris Dodds said, “The Mura platform provided an upgrade path between an analog and IP solution, without resorting to a very expensive turnkey solution. By using a Matrox certified chassis solution, the Trenton TVC4401 worked pretty much out of the box”.

The race was won by McLaren driver Jenson Button, with Sebastian Vettel in second place, and former teammate Lewis Hamilton coming in third. The Trenton TVC4401 and Mura MPX Series video wall controller boards captured and displayed Button’s victory from start to finish in the control room, meeting the Australian Grand Prix Corporation’s strict audio-visual needs and budget.

The Australian Grand Prix Corporation was so pleased that they asked The P.A. People to return to the 2013 Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix. And they all lived happily ever after....

You can check out the TVC4401 in this video from Trenton Systems.

For more information on any of the Matrox certified products from Trenton Systems please give us a call on +44 1672 511166, or send us an email.

FMC Cards available from BittWare

FPGA Mezzanine Cards (FMC) are being used to support a wide range of I/O interfaces in a variety of marketplaces and environments; from commercial spec to fully ruggedised and conduction cooled applications.

The new S5PE-F from BittWare includes an FMC site, which provides high-performance SerDes and LVDS, along with clocks, I2C, and JTAG connected to the Altera Stratix V FPGA. The site is based on the VITA 57 mezzanine standard for FPGA I/O, which allows designers to customise the S5PE-F to their individual needs with optional FMC I/O boards.

Vita 57 provides a specification describing "an I/O mezzanine module with connection to an FPGA or other device with reconfigurable I/O capability". The low profile FMC design gives you the option of which industry standard slot card, blade and motherboard form factors you want to work with, including VME, VPX, CompactPCI, and PCI, amongst others. FMC also compliments existing common low profile mezzanine technology such as PMC and XMC.

Benefits of FMC

• Technology Advantages
  With the ever increasing advances in I/O, new FMC modules can be interfaced to an existing FPGA carrier. And vice-versa - when next-generation FPGAs become available you can use your existing FMC modules with the new FPGA carrier to take advantage of the latest FPGA technology.
• Cost
  Being able to repurpose FMCs will help you reduce both your development costs and recurring costs across multiple programs. If you use a COTS FMC, like the range available from BittWare, you can make real cost savings as developers don't have to design their own boards.
• No Instructions Required
  You don't need to be an expert in standards like PCI or Serial RapidIO to use an FMC.
• Data Transfer
  To meet the demands of high-performance embedded computing, the FMC connector can support very high bandwidths. Individual signalling speeds up to 10 Gb/s are supported, with a potential overall bandwidth of 40 Gb/s between mezzanine and carrier card.

BittWare offers a range of Vita-57 FMC modules, which provide power supply and temperature monitoring as standard, and offer flexible control of clock source, sampling frequency, and calibration.

For more information please contact us on +44 1672 511166, or drop us an email - info@sarsen.net

Have a great weekend!

Welcome to the Blogosphere....

We’ve been blogging for a couple of years now, and have featured a plethora (excellent word) of stories, including new products, staff introductions, hard hitting exposés on life in the Sarsen team, and even a few "Fun Fridays" here and there. (Ok, the ‘hard hitting exposé bit might be a teeny exaggeration)….

Well some of our manufacturers have climbed aboard the blogging bandwagon, and you should check them out...

 

Trenton Systems have worked hard to fill their blog with all kinds of goodness. Products, solutions, industry news, and how they are using the latest technology, including Ultra HD TV and iPad apps for video wall control.
You can check it out here - Trenton Systems Blog and you can follow by email or RSS feed.

UEI have also started blogging in the last month. They used the blog to feature info about their newest chassis – the FLATRACK™, and have since given you a little peek into their enormous library of technical know-how.
Follow our friends at UEI here - UEI Blog


If you have a blog you think we should be following let us know by dropping us an email – info@sarsen.net

Have a great weekend!

Giving VMEBUS a new lease of life with the 4th Generation Intel Core i7 Haswell processor

VMEBUS is a 30 year old technology that has seen a rise in popularity recently, partly thanks to customers looking to refresh legacy systems rather than invest money in newer technology.

Far from seeing VME as on old technology, Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES) offers Intel VME, PowerPC VME, and QorIQ VME Single Board Computers (SBCs) and carrier cards for embedded computing applications.

With both air-cooled and conduction-cooled boards, these products can be applied to a wide variety of embedded applications across military, communications, and commercial/industrial markets. X-ES have gone as far as to incorporate the new 4th generation Intel® Core™ i7 Haswell processor onto a 6U VME SBC.

The XCalibur4530 provides up to 32 GB DDR3L-1600 ECC SDRAM in two separate channels, two PrPMC/PrXMC slots, and up to 64 GB of NAND flash. The XCalibur4530 also hosts numerous I/O ports, including Gigabit Ethernet, UAB, SATA, graphics, mezzanine I/O, and RS-232/422/485 through the backplane connectors.

If you’re looking to refresh a legacy design, or if VME is simply your favourite and you can’t bear to look at another technology, give us a call – we can offer a range of form factors and technologies, including the new 4th Gen Core i7 processor.

Contact us on +44 1672 511166 or email us – info@sarsen.net

Need to take control of your home? Maya can help!

Home automation is no longer a science fiction idea of the future.
(And by ‘Home Automation’ we mean something a little more sophisticated than ‘Clap on, Clap off’....)

The Clapper was one of the 20th Century's most
iconic pieces of technology

Home automation, or to give it the posh title, ‘Domotics’, could include anything from control of lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) and security locks to home entertainment systems, garden watering and pet feeding.

You can set your sprinklers to water your garden
automatically with a central control hub.

The ‘Lite’ product family from Dave has been designed for applications where size, weight and cost are critical factors, like home automation, digital signage and motion control systems.

The Maya is the latest 'Lite' CPU module from Dave, based on Texas Instruments DM814x (DaVinci) and AM387x (Sitara) ARM Cortex-A8 high performance application processors. It is based on the industry standard 204-pin SODIMM form factor (67.5mm x 40mm) and features a range of interfaces including dual Ethernet, dual CAN and native 3.3V I/O.

The Maya from Dave

If you’d like to check out the Maya for yourself why not try the Maya Embedded Linux Kit – (MELK), which contains the following to get you set up:

• MayaEVB-Lite Evaluation Board
• Maya CPU module (part number: DIxxxxx)
• NaonEVB-Lite Evaluation Board
• U-Boot bootloader (source code and binaries)
• Linux operating system (source code and binaries)
• Dave Virtual Development Kit (Linux virtual machine with pre-installed development kit)
• Full Naon documentation (Manuals, User's Guides, Application Notes, Evaluation Board schematics, ..)
• Periodic updates (documentation revisions, new Application notes, new Design notes.

Maya and MayaEVB-Lite carrier board

If you’d like any more information please visit our website www.sarsen.net and click on the Dave logo. Or you can give us a call on +44 1672 511166.