DO-178C Compliant Drivers for Rugged XMC and VPX Graphics Cards

DO-178B, Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification was developed by the commercial avionics industry to create software guidelines for avionics software developers. Although ‘officially’ just that, a guideline, it quickly became a formal standard for developing avionics software systems.

Since its establishment there have been a number of iterations of the guideline. The first version of the document, DO-178, covered the basic avionics software lifecycle. Version two - DO-178A - added avionics software criticality level details and put emphasis on software component testing to measure and maintain quality. DO-178B expanded the avionics software quality requirements with continuous quality monitoring and testing in real-world conditions. At a relatively short 100 pages, DO-178B became the 'go-to' standard for a wide range of developers, making it quite broad in nature and requiring in-depth understanding of intent.

But it wasn't just necessary for flight products. DO-178B had a number of additional benefits, including higher reliability and consistency, greater re-usability, verifiable software quality, much lower lifecycle and maintenance costs, faster hardware integration and greater portability.

DO-178B was created to match the stringent development practices and technologies of its day, but it makes very little allowance for the latest development technologies, including formal methods, Model-Based Development (MBD), and the use of object-oriented technologies.

The DO-178C standard recognises this and was specifically written to help bring the certification of avionics software in line with these 21st-century technologies. DO-178C retains the core information from DO-178B, and updates it where necessary to consider the need for developers to begin testing, or verifying, early in the process. The single most significant aspect of DO-178C is the addition of three technology-specific legs under the “core document” inherited from DO-178B.

Tech Source provides rugged XMC and VPX graphics cards that are available with DO-178C compliant drivers for use in safety critial environments.

The Condor 4000 XMC Series products are leading edge XMC form factor, rugged graphics/video cards for use in applications that require very high-end rugged graphics and computational power.

Based on AMD’s Embedded Radeon™ E8860 discrete GPU, the Condor 4000 XMC Series products offer the highest level graphical and GPGPU performance available for the embedded and rugged market. Its built-in video decoder enables dual HD decoding of H.264, VC-1. MPEG4 and MPEG2 compressed video stream.

Based on AMD’s Radeon™ E8860 GPU, the Condor 4000 3U VPX Series offers ultra high graphics and GPGPU performance for defense (military), avionics and other rugged markets. The 3U VPX form factor allows for operation at full power (45W) because the 3U VPX form factor allows for improved cooling.  This board comes complete with VPX-REDI covers. 

 For more information please contact Sarsen Technology on +44 1672 511166 or send us an email.

BittWare and nCk Research Collaborate to Provide an FPGA-based 100G Network Packet Broker with PCAP Filtering

As one of the market leading manufacturers in their field, new announcements from BittWare are always exciting...

The latest from the BittWare team in Concord, NH, is a collaboration with nCk Research - an innovative supplier of FPGA IP. This dream team have worked together to come up with a 100G network packet broker with PCAP filtering, which is implemented on BittWare's new PCIe board featuring Xilinx's UltraScale Virtex FPGA.

BittWare XUSP3S - Xilinx UltraScale 3/4-Length PCIe Board with Quad QSFP, DDR4, QDR-IV, and QDR-II+

PCAP processing expressions are used by many packet broker systems, but the point-to-point fabric from nCk Research is the first in the industry to optimise user inputs before loading resource settings into registers in the FPGA. This optimisation allows more rules to be packed into a smaller space and increases packet processing efficiency. The packet broker IP also provides configurable support for RMON1, line rate policies, aggregation, decimation, and de-duplication.

The XUSP3S is backward compatible with 10G/40G, and with nCk's IP supports up to 4x 100G ports and/or up to 16x 10/25G ports on each board. It can also be configured to implement any combination in between, allowing users to deploy with some 10G today and easily upgrade to all 100G in the field.


"We're pleased to be able to work with nCk to add innovative and comprehensive application IP to our already well established FPGA platforms," said Ron Huizen, Vice President of Systems & Solutions at BittWare.
"Their advanced filter IP component lets programmers use standard PCAP syntax to filter packets at full 100G line rate, and they can modify the filters on the fly- without having to reconfigure the FPGA. This, combined with nCk's other packet processing IP running on the most advanced FPGAs in the world, creates a compelling solution."


"FPGAs are the ideal choice for 100G at full line rate, and we're pleased to be able to partner with BittWare to build on their best-in-class FPGA platforms," said Matthew Chabot, President of nCk Research. "Their XUSP3S UltraScale board with support for quad 100G is a perfect fit."

Learn more:
10/25/40/100G Ethernet Filter IP Core for FPGA 
10/25/40/100G Packet Broker with PCAP Filtering 



Terabox
Up to 8 XUSP3S application cards can be installed in a BittWare TeraBox 4U rackmount system to handle up to 32x 100G ports and/or up to 128x 10/25G ports, allowing users to build virtually any packet processing solution with nCk network IP libraries; coupled with an optional PCIe DMA or NIC interface, it becomes possibly the most feature rich packet processing appliance in the industry.

Packet Broker with PCAP Filtering IP & Appliance Pricing and Availability
This configuration is available for purchase now, please contact Sarsen Technology for more information.

Tech Source Changes Name to EIZO Rugged Solutions to Drive New Business in Global Rugged COTS Market

Exciting news from Tech Source!

As of April 1st, 2016 they are changing their name to EIZO Rugged Solutions Inc.

This name change is a reflection of EIZO's commitment to making a big impact in the rugged COTS market.

Here in the UK, the Condor and Tyton branded rugged graphics, video capture, encoding, streaming and recording products are rapidly increasing in popularity, thanks to their rugged design and system compatibility, based on XMC and VPX form factors.

Apart from the name change, there will be no other day to day changes with current or prospective customers. Tech Source will continue to design, develop and manufacture all Condor products in the US, as they currently do.

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High Performance XMC Graphics Processor with OpenCL™ Support

The Condor 4000 series is designed to provide very high graphics performance for OpenGL, DirectX, OpenCL, GPGPU and other applications, in rugged environments. Based on the new E8860 GPU from AMD, the Condor 4000 XMC series offers ground breaking performance with 60% better performance than the previous series.The product features 640 shader processors, 2GB graphics memory and OpenCL support. It also offers 768/48 GFLOPS single/double precision performance.

Condor 4000 Series Key Features

• Latest Embedded GPU from AMD (E8860)
• 2GB Frame Buffer
• XMC or 3U Open-VPX Form Factor
• 2D/3D Graphics Compatibility
• OpenGL 4.2/DirectX 11.1/OpenCL 1.2
• Front and Rear DVI/VGA/DisplayPort
 • Long-Term Product Availability
• Comprehensive Customer Care
• Ideal for Embedded Applications
• Optimised for DirectX 11

For more information on the name change, or to find out more about Tech Source and their range of rugged ccideo and graphics cards please contact Sarsen Technology on +44 1672 51166, or send us an email with your enquiry.