It's the spookiest day of the year....

It’s officially the spookiest day of the year, and here at Sarsen we’ve had a bit of fun to mark the festivities!

A spooky edition of Sarsen's News Bytes was also issued today, if you're not on the mailing list you can sign up here. With no tricks, but plenty of treats, News Bytes features the latest product information, industry news and technical papers from our 12 franchised product lines.

We're off home to put on our fancy dress costumes, have a Happy Halloween!

Low Latency Technology - Removing the Barriers with BittWare

Low latency is the hot topic in the financial trading marketplace. Companies have to react to market events faster than the competition to make money. The round trip between the event and the final trade is quite significant...

• Event occurs at the source venue
• Information about that event is placed in a message on the wire
• Message reaches the decision-making application
• Application makes a trade decision based upon that event
• Order is sent to the trading venue
• Venue executes the order
• Order confirmation is sent back to application

All in a matter of milliseconds....

In April 2012, Fixnetix, global managed services provider for trading, market data and risk control, announced they were the first fintech (financial technology) company in Europe to offer the Altera Stratix V FPGA on the BittWare PCI Express slot-cards. The company announced late November 2010 a real-time low latency filter, iX-eCute, an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), to solve the eternal industry conundrum of pre-trade risk, compliance and ultra-low latency execution.

BittWare's 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. iX-eCute firmware deployment relies on minimal delays, significantly reduced jitter, energy and thermal requirements whilst commanding maximum performance per watt. BittWare offers a PCIe-compliant deployable slot-card that works out of the box, with validation, verification, and control software in place.

The S5PE from BittWare is a PCIe x8 card based on the high-bandwidth, power-efficient Altera Stratix V GX or GS FPGA. Features include -

• High density Altera Stratix V GX/GS
• PCIe x8 interface supporting Gen1, Gen2, or Gen3
• 2 QSFP+ cages allows dual 40GigE or 8 10GigE interfaces direct to the FPGA for lowest possible latency
• Up to 16 GB of DDR3 SDRAM with optional ECC
• Utility I/O includes: USB 2.0, RS-232, and JTAG

iX-eCute on the BittWare board with Altera Stratix processing is available for purchase through Fixnetix.

Sarsen Technology gets it's Spook On.....

The nights are drawing in, the leaves are turning, and there is a chill in the air. Here at Sarsen some of us are looking forward to a weekend of festive frights and spooky sights! Others, not so much...

All Hallow's Eve falls next Thursday, but this weekend will be filled with fancy dress, apple bobbing and, of course, pumpkin carving.

Jack-o'-lanterns are traditionally carried on All Hallows' Eve in order to frighten evil spirits. There is a well known Irish Christian folktale associated with the jack-o'-lantern which, in lore, is said to represent a "soul who has been denied entry into both heaven and hell".

"On route home after a night's drinking, Jack encounters the Devil who tricks him into climbing a tree. A quick-thinking Jack etches the sign of the cross into the bark, thus trapping the Devil. Jack strikes a bargain that Satan can never claim his soul. After a life of sin, drink, and mendacity, Jack is refused entry to heaven when he dies. Keeping his promise, the Devil refuses to let Jack into hell and throws a live coal straight from the fires of hell at him. It was a cold night, so Jack places the coal in a hollowed out turnip to stop it from going out, since which time Jack and his lantern have been roaming looking for a place to rest."

In Ireland and Scotland, the turnip has traditionally been carved during Halloween, but immigrants to North America used the native pumpkin, which is bigger and softer – making it easier to carve than a turnip.

We had a go at carving. Not bad, if we do say so ourselves!

Have a wonderful weekend!

UEISIM - Ideal Data Acquisition Platform for Simulink Users

UEISIM from United Electronic Industries is an ideal solution for Simulink users who need to test their simulations on real hardware. Models built in Simulink are deployed directly on the UEISIM using The Mathworks’ Real-Time Workshop.

MathWorks has recently announced Release 2013b (R2013b) of its MATLAB and Simulink product families. R2013b delivers new analysis, design, code generation and implementation and other features in MATLAB and Simulink, two new Polyspace products, as well as updates to 79 other products.

The UEISIM offers Simulink users a new, powerful and flexible I/O target. Models built in Simulink are deployed directly on the UEISIM using Real-Time Workshop. The combination creates a powerful new solution in the creation and tuning of many real-time and non-real-time applications. These include simulation model verification, rapid prototyping, and hardware-in-the-loop testing. The UEISIM is rugged, flexible and expandable enough that it is not only a great solution while in your development cycle, it’s also the ideal solution for your production hardware.

To use the UEISIM simply:

• Build your Simulink application.
• Open MATLAB, and select Simulink/Embedded target for UEISIM.
• Convert your model to use the UEISIM I/O blocks (if you had not used them in your original model).
• Create an executable via Simulink Coder.
• Connect the UEISIM in "external mode" (if you wish to remotely monitor the application while running on the UEISIM).
• Start your simulation. Six easy steps and your simulation is running live on real hardware.

Whether your application requires a few I/O channels or a few thousand, the UEISIM is an ideal solution. The Cube’s unique combination of clean and simple Simulink/Simulink Coder target compatible Linux operating system, I/O flexibility, compact size, mechanical and electrical ruggedness and ease of use is unparalleled.

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

BittWare 6U VPX Platform for Electronic Warfare and Radar Applications

BittWare’s EW & Radar Development System is a complete development and testing platform specifically designed for, you guessed it, electronic warfare and radar applications.

The single-slot OpenVPX system includes a BittWare Stratix V FPGA-based 6U VPX board along with a rear transition module for convenient I/O access, and arrives tested and configured, speeding up the development process for time-critical applications.

The platform includes:

• 19” 2U rackmount enclosure
• 1-slot backplane
• BittWare Stratix V FPGA-based 6U VPX board
• 4-channel, up to 5 GSPS, 8-bit ADC
• 2-channel, 5.6 GSPS, 14-bit DAC
• 6U VPX rear transition module for access to VPX I/O
• BittWorks II Development Tools

It also includes two VITA-57 FMCs for high bandwidth data transfer to and from the FPGAs on the S56X board. An ADC FMC provides 1, 2, or 4 8-bit A/D channels at up to 5 GSPS, directly to one of the S56X FPGAs. A DAC FMC provides 2 14-bit D/A channels at 5.6 GSPS, directly to the second FPGA on the S56X.

The BittWare EW & Radar Development System will be available for demos in the UK from mid-November. Please contact us if you would like to see the system put through its paces!

Email - info@sarsen.net 
Tel - +44 1672 511166

ZNYX Networks comes to the UK

The Sarsen Team are playing host to ZNYX Networks this week, with Ali Irani, Director of Sales, and Dave Parkinson, VP of Engineering are making the journey from Fremont, CA all the way to Marlborough UK.

The ZNYX / Sarsen relationship is a newly-established one, so this week will be spent in a mixture of in-house training and customer visits.

ZNYX products are ideally suited to serve several markets where high availability, ruggedisation and open-standards are valued –

Telecoms – The ZNYX OpenArchitect® switch management environment allows your team to develop network management integrated with application provisioning utilising Linux open-source, industry standard APIs.

Military – The AdvancedTCA form factor provides defense integrators with a scalable, ruggedized, mission critical platform based on open-standards. ZNYX also provides value-added services such as conformal coating and RTV application to meet customer's needs.

Aerospace – Ethernet switch platforms from ZNYX are ideal for integration into compact, lightweight solutions to power solutions from In-flight internet, In-flight entertainment, to backbone network connectivity for non-flight critical data systems.

We’ll be learning a lot this week, so if you’d like some more information or have any questions about technology from ZNYX now is definitely the time to ask!

Get in touch by phone - +44 1672 511166 or by email – info@sarsen.net

Warrior PDS Gets Underway with an Ultra PALS Supplier Programme Update

Under the Warrior Capability Sustainment Programme (WCSP), Lockheed Martin UK will be responsible for upgrades and enhancements extending the vehicles' service life to beyond 2040.

Ultra Electronics Precision Air & Land Systems will carry out work at its facility in Cheltenham on the Warrior Power Distribution System, the Cannon Control Unit and Fire Control Computer (FCC). Ultra is already well underway with the development of the FCC and will deliver the first Warrior units early next year. Sarsen Technology is pleased to announce that we are working with Ultra PALS to provide components for development and evaluation phases on the Scout SV and WCSP programmes.

The Ultra PALS event focussed on the two key Land Programmes Ultra are working on – Warrior and Scout SV. It was clear to the Land Systems management team that one of the enablers to success is strong relationships with their supply chain. The update has given all of their suppliers a clear vision of how they plan to work together to deliver the programmes successfully to meet the requirements of Lockheed Martin.

Tim Norris (circled), Sarsen Key Account Manager for Ultra PALS, said "We are excited to be working with Ultra PALS on this important program, following an extensive technology approval process."

For more information please contact Sarsen Technology on +44 1672 511166, or email Tim - tim.norris@sarsen.net

It's the Final Countdown...

Its the final week of the Dream Marketing Defence & Aerospace Roadshow, and we've had a great start at BAE Systems, Airbus and Rolls Royce in Bristol.

The vehicle has just opened it's doors at L3 Comms in Tewkesbury, and Tim is on site ready to speak to visitors about all the lovely hardware we're displaying, including embedded modules from Extreme Engineering based on the 4th Generation Intel Core i7 ‘Haswell’ processor. There are a variety of form factors and technologies, ranging from XMC graphics cards to embedded FPGA board-level solutions from some of our franchised product lines:

• BittWare – Industry leading COTS signal processing boards and systems based on the latest FPGA technology from Altera
• Dave – Small form factor rugged embedded CPU modules, Computer-On-Modules and systems based on ARM and PowerPC architectures
• Ecrin Systems – Mil-COTS systems designed around building blocks from Open Standard form factors including PICMG 1.3 and ATX
• Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES) - High-performance single board computers (SBCs), telecom modules, serial I/O and test fixtures
• General Standards – High Performance Analog I/O, Digital I/O and Serial I/O Bus Interface Solutions
• Tech Source - XMC rugged graphics, video capture and video streaming products for avionics, military and Air Traffic Control
• Trenton Systems – Rugged rackmount computer systems for military and aerospace, high performance video & graphics and data storage applications

Robbie will be at Agusta Westland tomorrow from 9.30 to 2pm for the penultimate day of the Roadshow. For more information please contact the Sarsen office - info@sarsen.net