VersaLogic Launches 'Osprey' - Small Powerful Embedded Computer Based on Intel Bay Trail Processor

Press Release

Tualatin, OR – June 28, 2016 
 

VersaLogic Corp., the embedded industry's most trusted computer company, has announced Osprey - an extremely small, rugged, embedded computer. 

This next generation of the VersaLogic Embedded Processing Unit (EPU) format combines processor, memory, video, and system I/O into an extremely compact full function embedded computer. The computer has a footprint just slightly larger than a credit card.

View datasheet

The Osprey was engineered to meet the military, avionic, and medical industries' evolving requirements for smaller, lighter, and more powerful embedded systems. Roughly the size of a credit card and less than 1.1 inches (28mm) thick, the Osprey is a highly-integrated embedded computer. It combines the new 4th generation Intel® Atom™ "Bay Trail" processor, with newer system interfaces, in a form factor designed to withstand extreme temperature, impact, and vibration.

Osprey is available in single, dual, and quad core models. The single core is suitable for lower-cost, lower power systems, while the quad core is ideal for UAV video applications where both higher performance and small size are important.

"We are excited to offer another EPU model with increased I/O capabilities. Adding USB 3.0, an additional half-sized mini PCIe socket, a second Ethernet port, digital I/O, and an I2C port allow our customers to support their I/O needs in one small package," said Gary Harris, VersaLogic's Director of Technology.

The Osprey features an industrial temperature Intel Atom E38xx processor optimized for performance and power balance. Osprey provides compatibility with a broad range of x86 operating systems and application development tools for reduced cost and development time.

Powerful Video Processing

Intel's advanced Gen 7 HD graphics engine provides outstanding graphics performance and is capable of supporting two simultaneous 1080p video streams. On-board hardware acceleration is available for encode/decode of H.264, MVC, VP8, VC1/WMV9, and other standards. The graphics engine also supports DirectX 11, Open GL 4.0, full HD video playback, dual display support, and resolution up to 2560 x 1600 @ 60Hz. Osprey supports a Mini DisplayPort++ output as well as a single-channel LVDS display output.

High Performance I/O Capabilities

Osprey's I/O connectivity includes dual Gigabit Ethernet ports with network boot capability, one USB 3.0 and four USB 2.0 ports, I2C, eight digital I/O's, and two serial ports. A SATA 3 Gbits/s interface supports high-capacity rotating or solid-state drives. Full and half-sized Mini PCIe sockets, a microSD socket, and on-board eMMC (on some models) provide flexible solid-state drive (SSD) options. Systems can be enhanced by leveraging the Mini PCIe sockets with plug-in Wi-Fi modems, GPS receivers, MIL-STD-1553, Ethernet, Firewire, and other mini PCIe cards/modules.

Designed, Manufactured and Tested for Extreme Environments

Designed and tested for industrial temperature (-40° to +85°C) operation, the Osprey also meets MIL-STD-202G specs for impact and vibration.
Osprey's on-board power filtering adds an important layer of protection for glitches caused by dirty or unstable power sources. The wide input voltage range (8 to 17 volts) greatly simplifies system power supply requirements. It is fully compatible with automotive type (nominal 12V) power systems. Soldered-on RAM and fanless thermal solutions provide additional ruggedisation for use in harsh environments.

Long-term Availability

The Osprey is covered by VersaLogic's 5-year product warranty and 5+ year availability guarantee. VersaLogic's Life Extension programs typically keep products available for 10+ years. Customisation services to help customers create unique solutions are available for the Osprey, even in low OEM quantities. Customisation options include conformal coating, revision locks, custom labeling, customized testing and screening, and more.

Pricing and Availability

The Osprey (part number VL-EPU-3311) is now in stock. OEM quantity pricing starts at $709 for the single-core model with 2 GB RAM.

For more information please contact Sarsen Technology - info@sarsen.net

Rugged, conduction cooled XMC Graphics card with two 3G-SDI video outputs and 3G-SDI video capture based on AMD E8860 GPU

New XMC Video Capture Card from EIZO Rugged Solutions

Following their rebranding in April, EIZO Rugged Solutions has announced a new member of the high performance Condor video capture card product family.

The Condor product line offers high performance COTS XMC or VPX form factor graphics and video solutions for millitary /avionics and aerospace markets. Air or rugged conduction cooled variants offer Open GL/3D, H.264, video windowing plus GPGPU capabilities. Linux, Windows and RTOS drivers are supported.

Condor 4107xX XMC Video Capture Card

 Based on the AMD Embedded Radeon E8860 GPU the Condor 4107xX is the latest rugged, conduction cooled addition to the Condor line. The XMC format Condor 4107xX has been designed for seamless integration with VPX single board computers, and offers two 3G-SDI video outputs and 3G-SDI video capture. The board supports video inputs and outputs on the rear XMC I/O connector (Pn6 VITA 46.9, x12d+x8d+24s), and can capture two simultaneous 3G-SDI, HD-SDI or SD-SDI video inputs. The board captures the incoming video data and sends it over PCIe to the host machine as raw data with low latency.

Condor 4107xX is available in various ruggedisation levels, and has been specifically designed to withstand environments with high temperature, shock or vibration (MIL-STD-810g). This makes the board an ideal consideration for defense, command and control, training and simulation, surveillance and radar display environments.

Main Features

• XMC Form Factor
• Rugged XMC Graphics Card with Video Capture
• AMD Embedded Radeon™ E8860 GPU
• 2GB GDDR5 Memory
• 640 Shader Processor, 608/38 GFLOPs Single/Double Precision Performance
• Two 3G-SDI, HD-SDI or SD-SDI Video Outputs
• Two 3G-SDI, HD-SDI or SD-SDI Video Inputs
• DisplayPort, VGA, STANAG 3350 and RGB Sync-on-green Video Outputs
• OpenGL 4.2, DirectX® 11.1, Shader 5.0
• OpenCL™ 1.2, DirectCompute 11 (GPGPU Computing)
• Rugged - MIL-STD-810g Vibration, Shock, Humidity and Temperature as needed
• Rear XMC I/O (VITA 46.9)
• Conduction Cooled
• Comprehensive Customer Support
• Long Term Product Availability
• Windows/Linux (provided by default)
• Real-time Operating System (RTOS) support including VxWorks & Integrity (optional)

For more information on the new board, or any of the products in the Condor line please get in touch with the Sarsen Technology engineering team on +44 1672 511166, or send us an email - info@sarsen.net

EE Journal Feature Article - The x86 Moat: Can Intel Defend the Data Center?

A Data Centre is a dedicated space for housing computer systems and associated components,

including telecoms and storage systems. Data centres stem from the days of the huge computer rooms of the early ages of the computing industry. This arrangement was largely unaffected by the steady reduction in size of the computer as the functionality requirements increased to such an extent that the systems still required the same amount of space. 

During the 1990s, the challenge was deploying enough processing power to meet the rapidly growing web audience. Considering Intel's market share for this industry today, x86-based servers didn't actually exist until the late 90s. But within a decade x86 processors were in the majority of servers being deployed in data centres.


Kevin Morris has written a really interesting article for EE Journal, looking at the role of FPGAs and their potential impact on the EDA industry.


May 31, 2016
The x86 Moat - Can Intel Defend the Data Center?
By Kevin Morris

Read the full article 

Excerpt:

Intel’s data center fortress is defended by the x86 moat.

The single factor that most locks Intel’s hardware into the sockets that sit on the blades that slip into the racks that line the rows of just about every data center on the planet is the x86 moat. Just about every piece of software in the universe was written and optimised for the x86 architecture. There are billions and billions of lines of code out there working every day that have been debugged and tested and proven to work reliably (well, as reliably as software gets, anyway) on Intel’s architecture.

Before any attacker can hope to displace the incumbent supplier, they have to convince the customer that changing processor architectures is really not that big a deal.

Well-designed fortresses are very good at protecting against the expected. For the fortress to be truly at risk - for Intel’s position in the data center to be realistically challenged in a meaningful way - we would need to see a sea change - an event that profoundly alters the nature of the game - a discontinuity.

FPGA-based acceleration is that discontinuity.

If the creation of heterogeneous processors with von Neumann machines sharing the workload with FPGA-based accelerators can improve energy efficiency in the data center by orders of magnitude, we have a compelling event worth an incredible amount of money - and trouble.

End of excerpt


FPGA Hardware
Sarsen Technology supplies and supports a wide range of hardware based on both Xilinx and Altera FPGAs, and can also supply a full range of software development tools and software drivers to get your FPGA system to market on-time and on-budget - www.sarsen.net
For more information please contact Sarsen Technology on +44 1672 511166, or send us an email: info@sarsen.net