Sarsen Technology Christmas Office Hours

The Sarsen Technology offices will be closed over the festive period.

If there is anything we can help you with before the end of the year please let us know.

Friday 14th December - Limited Availability

Friday 21st December - Open

Monday 24th December - Closed

Tuesday 25th December - Closed

Wednesday 26th December - Closed

Thursday 27th December - Closed

Friday 28th December - Closed

Monday 31st January 2019 - Closed

Tuesday 1st January 2019 - Closed

Wednesday 2nd January 2019 - Open

Emails will be monitored, and technical support will be provided directly by our manufacturers.

Click for Out of Hours Support

From everyone at Sarsen Technology, we wish you and your families a very

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

 

Long-Life COTS Solutions for Mission-Critical Land, Sea, and Air Applications

With literally hundreds of years of experience between them, VersaLogic's engineers know all about building dependable, high reliability embedded computers for mission critical applications. Some of today's most sophisticated and high profile military equipment has been designed around a rugged embedded computer from VersaLogic.

VersaLogic - Find Out More

A leading supplier of Helmet Mounted Displays (HMDs) for military aerospace applications is using a VersaLogic single board computer (SBC) for video processing and control functions in their latest helmet design.

The new display system is a powerful video processing solution and at the time it was the world’s only full-colour, helmet-mounted cueing system. The system provides for rapid target recognition and easy hand-off to sensors and weapons systems.

To enhance vibration protection, VersaLogic installed latching connectors, replaced jumpers with zero-ohm resistors, and applied conformal coating to a number of key components.

VersaLogic's product life cycle management and its market leading product longevity guarantee provided the customer with reduced inventory costs and ensured future product availability.


VersaLogic Technology Benefits

• Rugged board-level COTs computing solutions
• Extensive life cycle support - guaranteed 5-year off-the-shelf availability and formal programs for 10+ year extensions
• IoT Ready embedded CPU and processing modules
• Award winning customer support – awarded “Five Star” (highest) rating by the world’s largest defense contractor
• Ultra-high reliability COTS – industry leading manufacturing quality and screening programs
• Industry leading 5-year warranty
• Modified COTs in quantities as low as 100 units

Whether your embedded application needs a standard off-the-shelf product, or if it needs a little tweak to include some customisation, the knowledgeable engineering team at Sarsen Technology works closely with VersaLogic to fully support even the most demanding specifications.

Speak to one of our engineers to discuss your requirements.
T: +44 1672 511166
E: info@sarsen.net

Article - The Bus Too Tough To Die!

 

MilesTek has offered complete connectivity solutions since 1981, and since then their customers have come to expect more than just top quality products. MilesTek provides answers that help customers solve their installation or project questions, as well as writing and sharing useful articles, white papers and industry news. 

The latest article from the Mil/Aero component experts at MilesTek is an in-depth look at the MIL-STD-1553 bus.

Considering how long it's been in service, the MIL-STD-1553B bus has survived remarkably well, despite other, more advanced solutions having gained wide acceptance in the last few years.

However, the fact remains that the maximum data rate of 1Mb/s is orders of magnitude too slow for today’s data-intensive systems, therefore on paper logic dictates that it will soon fade away. That may be a logical assumption, but it’s likely to prove wrong, for several reasons.

 The most obvious is that MIL-STD-1553B continues to fly on at least 30,000 aircraft, as well as on commercial and military ships, and is widely used in industrial and ……

To continue reading this article which was originally published in Aerospace & Defense Technology please click here.

Unrivaled Processing Performance on Rugged, Deployable Intel Xeon D Processor Boards

Since announcing their first single board computers (SBCs) based on the Intel® Xeon® D-1500 family of processors in 2015, Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES) has been busy, developing an industry-leading portfolio of embedded Xeon D products that is still growing.

These embedded SBCs provide designers with feature-rich computing solutions that are equally at home in a broad range of industries and applications, from challenging industrial environments to rugged defence deployments.

Originally available with up to eight cores, the Xeon D processors from Intel are now available with support for 12 and 16 cores in a single processor. Integrated on X-ES VPX SBCs, these high-performance, low-power processors are ideally suited for a variety of applications and infrastructure, including routers, network appliances, and battlefield communications.

Xeon D is also the first Intel processor with native extended temperature support, a key requirement for many defence and aerospace applications. Xeon D processors with up to 12 cores are rated by the manufacturer for an operating temperature range of -40⁰C to 85⁰C.

Keeping pace with strong demand from the defence and aerospace sectors, X-ES continues to introduce new products and features to their Xeon® D lineup. Their talented design engineering team draws upon an impressive breadth of experience with this architecture to minimise risk for even the most challenging designs.

There are a number of configurations available, including 3U VPX, 6U VPX, and COM Express form factors. For more information please contact Christos or Nigel who can discuss your application with you in detail.

A Little Local History... Samhain at Avebury

Here in Marlborough we are lucky to be 10 minutes from some of the oldest surviving Neolithic henge monuments in the country.

Avebury is one of the largest ceremonial sites in Britain, and was built over many centuries from 2850 BC until around 2200 BC. The monument itself is made up of a bank and a ditch, known as a henge, with a large outer stone circle and two separate smaller stone circles in the centre of the monument. Archaeologists have not been able to determine it's exact purpose, but they believe it was most likely used for some form of ritual or ceremony.

Many followers of contemporary Pagan religions such as Wicca and Druidry have adopted Avebury as a sacred site. Pagan rites at the site are performed publicly, and attract crowds of curious visitors to witness the event, particularly on major celebrations such as the summer solstice.

The ancient festival of 'Samhain' (pronounced saah-win) means Summer's End, and marks the end of the harvest season. It is the time of year when the veils between this world and the Otherworld were believed to be at their thinnest: when the spirits of the dead can cross back to join the land of the living. Non-Pagans might call it Halloween...

In Avebury one of the most popular Samhain ceremonies is the walking of the labyrinth. The labyrinth ritual builds on generic afterlife symbolism, and the people who take part walk a physical sacred pattern marked out by candles or markings in the grass itself. Samhain is seen by many as the start of a new year, so it's a perfect chance to reflect, unwind and let go of things while they walk the labyrinth.

As well as the labyrinth there are lots of fun activities happening this weekend as well as on 31st, including Tarot reading, ghost tours, craft workshops and book signings.

For more information pleas click on one of the following links:

• Avebury Samhain Labyrinth 2018
• Samhain Weekend Events - Avebury

Cyber Cheltenham - Meet Cyber Talent at CyNam 11th October 2018

CyNam, (Cyber Cheltenham) is a non-profit networking group based in the heart of the UK's cyber security and technology ecosystem in Gloucestershire.

Despite Cheltenham having an excellent pedigree for cyber technology, development networks and technology investment groups have focused their attention on Birmingham, Bristol and Oxford. CyNam is hoping to change this.

Find Out More - CyNam

The goal of CyNam is to bring together the best technology minds from local SME’s and Start-ups, to fully harness the rich cyber security ecosystem that flourishes around Cheltenham, the home of the National Technical Authority for Information Security, GCHQ.

 
CyNam 18.3 has now been confirmed for the evening of Thursday 11th October.

With a focus on The Evolving Role of the CISO the first confirmed speakers are Mark Schiller: Interim CISO at Heathrow Airports and Andrea Simmons: Previously CISO at HP Enterprise Security.

If you’ve never been to a CyNam meet up you can register your interest here.


Nigel Norman from Sarsen Technology will be there, and it’s a great opportunity to meet with a group of knowledgeable individuals, great companies, new exciting start-ups and exceptional Cyber talent.

If you'd like more information please get in touch - Contact Sarsen Technology

 

September 2018 - Netcope Technologies Announces the Appointment of Sarsen Technology Ltd as UK Distributor

As you may have seen in the news this week and across social media, the team at Sarsen Technology Limited is very excited to be working with Netcope Technologies as their exclusive sales and marketing partner in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

If you haven't heard of Netcope Technologies they are about to make a big splash here in the UK.

Based in Brno in the Czech Republic, Netcope specialises in high-performance networking solutions, including state-of-the-art FPGA technology for packet capture, network packet processing (NPP) and low-latency trading applications.


Nigel Norman, Managing Director of Sarsen Technology Limited added, “The embedded FPGA market is changing fast as FPGA technology becomes ever more widely adopted. Our customers, especially in the cyber security, networking and financial trading markets, are looking for more complete solutions from Sarsen Technology rather than just FPGA hardware and software drivers".

Netcope Technologies has innovative, exciting and customer-proven FPGA solutions that have our engineering team chomping at the bit. Their 200GBPS Ethernet adapter will give our networking product customers a significant processing boost, and Netcope’s P4 smart NIC programming solution will rapidly change the way that network data plane processing is achieved.

FinTech customers won't miss out either - Netcope's wire speed packet capture processing is a game changer for low-latency packet processing and the low latency financial trading solution, Tradecope, is a powerful solution for our high frequency trading customers.

We are looking forward to busy but exciting times ahead!

For more information about the new relationship and how it could benefit your FPGA networking application please contact Sarsen Technology on +44 1672 511166, or email info@sarsen.net.

We Take a Look at the Xilinx RFSoC

Way back in October 2017 Xilinx announced the delivery of their Zynq® UltraScale+™ RFSoC family. We've recently seen an upturn of enquiries about these devices, and with the Early Access/ silicon samples phase out of the way customers are very excited about the potential this technology can offer.

Photo: Xilinx.com

To create the RFSoCs, Xilinx built the analog directly into the popular MPSoC Zynq device, in the form of  high performance ADCs and DACs that feed directly into the Zynq interconnect fabric.

This means that the physical footprint and chip-to-chip latency is greatly reduced, and it also completely removes the external digital interfaces between the FPGA itself and the mixed-signal convertors.

Putting this RF quality analog function on an MPSoC opens up the playing field for a wide range of  commercial applications including test & measurement and high performance RF applications, with 5G wireless deployment right at the top of the list.

As SWaP is such a critical set of factors for the majority of defence applications military customers also benefit because the Zynq RFSoCs provide a combination of power efficiency, hardware flexibility and a reduction in required space, making them ideal for radar, early warning detection systems and man-portable communications equipment.

Based on 16nm UltraScale+ MPSoC architecture with an ARM Cortex-A53 processing subsystem and the highest signal processing bandwidth in a Zynq UltraScale+ device, the All Programmable RFSoCs monolithically integrate RF data converters for up to 50-75 percent system power and footprint reduction, and soft-decision Forward Error Correction (SD-FEC) cores to meet 5G and DOCSIS 3.1 standards.

There are now a number of proven Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC solutions available on the market. Please get in touch if you'd like to discuss an application with one of our engineers - info@sarsen.net or +44 1672 511166.

www.sarsen.net

MIL-STD Rugged 2U Server for High Performance Computing

 
We work with a significant number of military and industrial customers, and ECRIN Systems' rugged servers are an ideal solution for their high-performance computing requirements.

The OPALE V2-MIL family of compact, highly customisable rugged servers are used by the French Army and Navy for a wide range of applications, from secure communications to weapons control, radar and surveillance. Offering high-capacity data storage in a rugged, stainless-steel package, and able to withstand some of the most hostile environments they are particularly well suited for use at sea in harsh salt fog.

Many mil-aero applications are heavily restricted in terms of size, so the OPALE V2-MIL has been designed to fit in a standard 19" rack. It's 2U height and less than 50cm depth gives customers high-end computing performance in a compact footprint.

ECRIN takes care of the full system development and guarantees long term availability to allow customers to concentrate on their own added value. Customisation is straightforward, even in small quantities. From mechanical parts to industrial design including user LED’s and I/O’s, as well as front and rear connectors, users can simply set up the system and let it run without issue, even in marine environments where the sea salt can cause other chassis to rust.



Features:

Up 0°C/46°C operating	EMI/RFI: AECTP500 with power line filter
-35°C/+71°C storage	47.6 dBA
RH: 93%@40°C non-condensing	Intel® Xeon® E5-2600 v4/v3 series
Altitude: 0-3500m operating	Xeon Scalable series, on demand
Salt Fog protection	7x slots low-profile I/O
15g@20ms on Z-axis	Up to 6x removable 2.5’’ SSD (12TB)
First natural frequency > 80Hz	MIL-Circular connectors, on demand

For more information including full technical datasheet please contact the Sarsen Technology engineering team on +44 1672 511166 or via email: info@sarsen.net

 

Obsolescence Management for Rugged, Embedded Computers

We are fortunate to work with a lot of really great companies across the entire globe, and Extreme Engineering is one of the best.

Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES) is a world leader in the design, manufacture, and support of embedded computing solutions for compute-intensive military, communications, commercial, and industrial applications, provides a product portfolio of commercial-grade to fully ruggedised boards and systems.

The X-ES product line features the very latest in Xilinx FPGA, ARM Cortex, Intel i7 technology and NXP PowerPC processors. SBCs from X-ES are available in a number of form factors - 3U and 6U rugged VPX boards, XMC, VME, CompactPCI and 6U LRM.

See more - XES Products

Their specialty is custom services, from modified COTS to full-scale custom designs, getting you the technology you need in the shortest possible time frame. All of X-ES' products are backed by the best possible customer support, from both X-ES and their global distribution network, and they are committed to providing full life cycle support for their products.

To provide customers with information, flexibility, and control over the products they depend on, X-ES offers three configuration and obsolescence management options.

Level 1 - Change Notice	Level 2 - Change Control	Level 3 - Life Cycle Control
All customers have access to a complimentary Change Notice. Any time a Major (Class I) Engineering Change Order (ECO) occurs, X-ES will issue a Product Change Notification (PCN) and then post it to the X-ES online customer information resource, SupportNet. To be automatically notified of such changes, customers may also subscribe to email notifications of updates to SupportNet.	For customers who need to closely manage changes to their product’s design, X-ES offers Change Control. Under this upgraded configuration management option, designated customer contacts will receive notification for all Major (Class I) ECOs. They then have the option to accept or reject those changes.	Life Cycle Control includes configuration and obsolescence management, ideal for customers with long project lifecycles. Along with the Change Control configuration management offered in Level 2, X-ES proactively monitors obsolescence notification sources and issues an obsolescence notification form to designated customer contacts. Life Cycle Control provides options to lengthen the life of projects as products age and their components reach End-of-Life (EOL). When an obsolescence notification is issued, X-ES provides an impact assessment, along with details for last-time buys of components, substitute components, and product replacements/ re-designs as appropriate, thus ensuring product availability for several years to come.

For more information please contact Sarsen to discuss your application with one of our engineers.

What is an Embedded Processing Unit (EPU) ?

Embedded Processing Unit

Definition - Fully assembled and tested x86 embedded computer based on COM Express form factor.

The EPU concept is based on the flexibility of a 2-board set forming a complete embedded computer product. When you combine two completely separate CPU and I/O modules, tightly sandwiched together, the final product provide a huge range of advantages and a much smaller footprint than equivalent single board computers.

VersaLogic's family of rugged EPU products are designed around the COM Express form factor, and are delivered as fully assembled and tested units (including heat plate).



What's Inside

 

EPUs offer a long list of advantages over other embedded computer board products, including:

• Fast time-to-market 
• Smaller footprint 
•  -40° to +85°C operation 
• Fully tested 
• Available off-the-shelf!

There is also often the added complication of designing a custom carrier card for COM Express modules. EPUs eliminate the effort needed to design with high speed signals, validate the I/O circuits to make sure they work properly, create testing methods for the finished units, etc. The expertise required to create software drivers, BIOS customisation, and API code for the on-board I/O is also removed for easy integration.

EPU modules are almost obsolescence proof. The industry standard form factor means it's really easy to migrate to an EPU with a newer CPU module, but keep your existing I/O configuration and connectors for drop-in compatibility. This is combined with VersaLogic's standard 5-year availability guarantee and Product Life Extension programs for almost completely future-proof technology solutions.

Have a look at the EPU Product Overview to find out more.

If you think one of VersaLogic's rugged, off-the-shelf EPU embedded computer models might be a good fit for your application please give one of our experienced engineers to discuss your requirements.

T: 01672 511166
E: info@sarsen.net  

Why Do We Ask for End User Statements?

The U.S. Government controls exports of sensitive equipment, software and technology as a way of promoting their national security interests and foreign policy objectives.

We work with a number of manufacturing partners based in the United States, and some of them make a practice of requesting End Use Statements for all international orders, and for all items, whether a license is technically required or not.

This includes items that are coded as EAR 99, which means that they are still subject to Export Administration Regulations, but they don't have an Export Control Classification Number (ECCN) on the Commerce Control List.

The majority of the boards and systems that we sell are considered 'dual-use', and do have an ECCN, rather than an EAR 99 classification, which is why our partners record the end user information for their products. By obtaining the "End User Statement" they are able to properly identify any license requirements and exceptions.

If you have any problems completing an End User Statement for one of our partners we are here to help. Please contact the team here on 01672 511166 and we can go through it with you step by step.

1553 Tutorial - Alta Data Technologies

Alta Data Technologies LLC (Alta) is a company dedicated to providing the best possible MIL-STD-1553 and ARINC-429/717 COTS communications products and service in the Aerospace Industry.





Find out more - Alta Data

Alta has designed a full line of PCI, PCI Express (PCIe) interface cards for almost any computer backplane. They also supply their own innovative real-time Ethernet connectivity devices.

Alta is the only COTS supplier to test 1553 card designs to SAE AS4111 Protocol Validation Tests, and they manufacture their products to the highest IPC-610 Class 3 standards using processes managed by an ISO9001 quality management system. All of this is backed up by their 5 year limited warranty – one of the best in the industry. Alta is fully supported in the UK by Sarsen Technology.

MIL-STD-1553

MIL-STD-1553 has had a long, popular life – and will continue to be supported for decades to come in new and legacy applications. Alta engineers and managers have been in the avionics industry since the early 1980’s and have worked on nearly every major avionics program.

They have put together a MIL-STD-1553 tutorial, designed to complement the referenced MIL HDBK 1553A Notice II (3572 downloads) document, which provides an excellent detailed review of the 1553 standard (MIL-HDBK-1553A Section 20 provides a summary of MIL-STD-1553B Notice 2).  Commercially available chip-sets and interface cards (like Alta’s) “off load” the protocol processing (protocol engine) so the engineer’s primary concern is design/integration of application software and cabling issues.

You can download the tutorial by clicking here. If you have any questions please get in touch with the Sarsen team - info@sarsen.net

New 3U VPX Rugged Video Capture Board from EIZO Rugged

EIZO Rugged Solutions has released the Condor GR4 3U VPX 3G-SDI capture board, an ultra-high performance rugged graphics/capture board with four 3G-SDI inputs and outputs.

• The MIL-STD-810G Condor GR4 3U VPX card is a single slot, SWaP-conscious card for ultra-high performance rugged ISR applications

The new graphics module is based on the NVIDIA® Quadro® P5000 and P3000 graphics processing units (GPUs) with 2,048 or 1,280 CUDA cores respectively and up to 6.4 TFLOPs shader performance.

Condor GR4 3U VPX Datasheet

The Condor GR4 is a single slot, SWaP-conscious card designed for today’s rugged Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR) applications such as avionics, manned and unmanned video streaming and security/surveillance.

Selwyn L. Henriques, president and CEO of EIZO Rugged Solutions, commented, “The Condor GR4 3U VPX card is the perfect solution for today’s ISR market that is transitioning to 3G-SDI. Our ISR customers typically have 3-4 sensors per gimbal and have been demanding a single slot, SWaP-conscious card that does everything – ingest information from the sensors, output this high definition data over 3G-SDI, process it using the GPU and then encode each stream using the onboard H.265/H.264 encoder.

The Condor GR4 3U VPX offers four 3G-SDI inputs and four 3G-SDI outputs and a DisplayPort output. With NVIDIA GPUDirect™ Direct Memory Access (DMA) support, the captured video data is transferred directly into GPU memory for processing or display, both resulting in extremely low latency. The MIL-STD-810G compliant card supports PCI Express 3.0 (up to 8 lanes) and is available in conduction-cooled and air-cooled variants.

Read Full Press Release

For more information on the Condor GR4 3U VPX card or any other product from EIZO Rugged Solutions, please contact the Sarsen Technology team - info@sarsen.net

Extreme Engineering Releases 3U VPX Xilinx Kintex UltraScale FPGA Module

Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES) introduces the XPedite2570, a rugged FPGA processing module with a high-speed optical front-end interface. Equipped with an integrated Xilinx Kintex® UltraScale™ FPGA, the XPedite2570 optimises both cost and performance for high-bandwidth embedded computing applications.

XPedite2570 Datasheet

Xilinx Kintex® UltraScale™ FPGA Delivers Great Performance Without Great Cost
The XPedite2570 is a high-performance, conduction-cooled 3U VPX FPGA processing module based on the Xilinx Kintex® UltraScale™ XCKU115 FPGA.

The Xilinx Kintex® UltraScale™ family of FPGAs provides the best price/performance/watt at 20nm, as well as the highest signal processing bandwidth for a mid-range device.

Ideal for programs that need to optimise both cost and capability, the Kintex® UltraScale™ XCKU115 packs over 1.4 M system logic cells, 5,520 DSP slices, and 75.9 Mb of block RAM into a cost-effective package. It also provides a straightforward upgrade path for legacy systems, offering up to 40% power savings compared to the previous generation of FPGAs.


Optimised for High-Bandwidth Applications
The XPedite2570 is a reconfigurable FPGA resource designed to meet the demands of high-bandwidth applications such as packet processing, signal processing, and DSP-intensive applications. It features 12 rugged, protocol-independent fiber optic transceivers operating at up to 10.3125 Gb/s, along with 8 GB of DDR4 ECC SDRAM in two independent channels capable of up to 38 GB/s aggregate bandwidth. The XPedite2570 has several options for high-performance backplane I/O, including a x8 Gen3 PCI Express interface, dual GTH transceivers with a maximum data rate of 16.375 Gb/s, and up to 44 LVDS transceivers for user I/O.

X-ES’ board support package for the XPedite2570 includes an FPGA Development Kit for Xilinx Vivado complete with a reference design, IP Integrator IP blocks, HDL, test benches, and Linux drivers, so developers can jump right into application development without having to work through hardware integration issues.

Build a Rugged COTS System with Compatible X-ES Products
For lower development costs and faster deployment, pair the XPedite2570 with a 3U VPX single board computer (SBC) and install them together in the XPand6215, a Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) rugged system designed to meet the rigorous standards of MIL-STD-704F and MIL-STD-461. The XPand6215 can support several embedded single board computers from the XPedite767x product line, such as the XPedite7670. This family of high-performance SBCs is based on the Intel® Xeon® D processor, which provides up to 16 Xeon®-class cores in a single, power-efficient System-on-Chip (SoC) package.

More about Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES)

New Concept Modular Computer Could Change The Way You Design Embedded Systems

myOPALE™ from ECRIN Systems offers disruptive technology designed to multiply the capabilities of your next embedded computers in a much smaller foot print, thanks to PCI Express® over Cable interconnectivity, and standard 5.25’’ building blocks with mini-SAS HD connectors.

For three decades, Industrial PC’s have tended to use one of two types of architectures from the Eighties: ATX/miniITX motherboard, or PICMG® passive backplane. In both cases, the CPU board and its I/O cards were physically and mechanically linked through a PCI Express PCB.

The myOPALE Concept was born from four simple concepts:

• - Break the mechanical link between the CPU and I/O cards, using PCI Express Over Cable interconnection;
• - Design with building blocks based on a standard 5.25’’ form factor;
• - Use widely deployed inter-connectivity standards from SNIA/SFF Technology Affiliate, encompassing cables, connectors, form factor sizes and housing dimensions;
• - Integrated thermal solution at building blocks level.

For more details, including datasheet and technical specs, please visit the myOpale page on our website or contact one of our engineers to discuss your application.

Absolute Quality! ISO 9001 at Sarsen Technology

A good quality process drives a company, and ideally, involves everyone in producing a quality service or product.

We've been working hard over the 12 months since our last audit to continue to develop and improve our quality processes, in order to provide the best possible service to our customers.

Following our very successful transition audit this week we are about to migrate to IS0 9001:2015 from our currently held IS0 9001:2008 accreditation.

ISO 9001 is a global standard that specifies the requirements for a quality management system (QMS). Companies like ours use the standard to demonstrate the ability to consistently provide products and services that meet customer requirements.

It oversees everything from process management to customer satisfaction to make sure the customer isn’t affected by any bad practices at their suppliers. Most of our customers simply can't work with suppliers who don’t hold a recognised quality certification, and so its very important that we maintain our ISO certified status.

One of our most fundamental quality goals is to boost customer satisfaction by planning for and  exceeding our customer's expectations, in terms of both service and technology offerings. By maintaining our proven and positive customer satisfaction levels we retain our customers project after project, because the happiest customers are definitely the most loyal.

For more information on our quality policies please contact Sarsen Technology - info@sarsen.net

BittWare Announces SmartNIC Shell for Building FPGA-powered 100G NICs

SmartNIC Shell Supports DPDK, Xilinx SDNet, P4 Programming, User Customisations, and Timestamping

BittWare has announced SmartNIC Shell, a suite of IP modules for building 100G network interface controllers (NICs) using FPGAs for hardware packet processing.

Users can fully customise Shell components, including a Match/Action pipeline with features including Xilinx SDNet support and the P4 network programming language. For host application interaction the Arkville DPDK IP is integrated for kernel bypass. SmartNIC Shell allows teams to avoid the time-consuming process of building core NIC functions into an FPGA, allowing them to focus resources on their own application.

Read more - Full Press Release

“We built the SmartNIC Shell because we noticed that many of our customers spend half their development time creating a networking shell,” said Craig Lund, Vice-President Network Products, BittWare. “All of that development time should be going into their own product’s unique value instead.”


SmartNIC Shell Top Features

Quickly Build 100G NICs	Focus your attention on your unique application, instead of re-inventing a NIC.
Match/Action Pipeline	Standardised kernel bypass for host interaction over PCIe. SmartNIC Shell provides DPDK offload to interact with host applications.
TimeServo Timestamping	Precision time stamping including 1588-compatible clock adjustments. Uses TimeServo IP from Atomic Rules
Xilinx UltraScale+ FPGA	Large, powerful FPGAs with ample room for user IP. Selection of BittWare boards including traditional low-profile NIC size (XUPPL4) to 3/4-length boards with additional logic and memory options (XUPP3R).

For more information please contact the Sarsen FPGA team on +44 1672 511166 or send us an email - info@sarsen.net

VersaLogic Announces ARM Based Embedded Computer Family

VersaLogic announced a brand new line of production-ready, ARM-based embedded computers at Embedded World 2018.

The Tetra is the first in the family, and provides a power-efficient, quad-core Single Board Computer (SBC) featuring a quad-core i.MX6 Cortex®-A9 32-bit processor. The board typically consumes about 4W of power when operating (not idle). It is ready for off-the-shelf deployment into demanding industrial applications requiring rugged, long-life, power-efficient, industrial temperature rated (-40° to +85°C) solutions.

VersaLogic Tetra Datasheet

Unlike many ARM-based "modules," VersaLogic's new line of ARM-based EPC (Embedded Processing Card) products are complete board-level computers. They do not require carrier cards, companion boards, connector break-out boards, or other add-ons to function.

For ease of mounting, and future upgrades, VersaLogic's ARM products are designed around the size and mounting points of COM Express products. Unlike proprietary-format ARM products, VersaLogic ARM boards provide a standard mounting pattern allowing for simplified upgrading in the future.

The Tetra matches the COM Express Basic footprint (125 x 95 mm) and offers a variety of I/O options for rugged, industrial applications. All three quad-core Tetra models feature a wide (8 to 17-volt) power input, making it ideal for 12-volt automotive applications.

More information

Many applications that require lower power or lower heat dissipation still need very high levels of reliability. VersaLogic's 10+ year formal life-extension program ensures long production cycles free from expensive changes and upgrades that come from short, disposable life cycles.

On-board I/O
A variety of on-board I/O includes a Gigabit Ethernet port with network boot capability, HDMI and LVDS video outputs, and two USB 2.0 Ports. Serial I/O (RS-232) and a SATA II interface or mSATA, support high-capacity rotating or solid-state drives.

CAN Bus, I2C and SPI are also included along with a 6-axis e-compass, and MIPI camera input. The on-board Mini PCIe socket provides flexible expansion using plug-in Wi-Fi modems, GPS receivers, Ethernet, FireWire, and other mini cards.

Industrial Toughness
Designed and tested for Industrial temperature (-40° to +85°C ) operation, VersaLogic's rugged Tetra meets MIL-STD 202G specifications to withstand high impact and vibration. It is engineered and validated to excel in unforgiving environments. Each component is carefully selected to ensure reliable operation in the field. With decades of embedded design experience, VersaLogic understands how to design in quality and reliability. U.S.-based technical support includes comprehensive assistance during project development.

Availability
The Tetra, part number VL-EPC-2700, is available from stock. Contact info@sarsen.net for more information.

Embedded World 2018 - Highlights from Nuremberg

From 27 February until the end of the day tomorrow the focus is once again on all things embedded.

The embedded technology community has joined together at the Nuremberg Exhibition Centre to shine a spotlight exclusively on the latest trends in the sector, with more than 1,000 exhibitors presenting state-of-the-art covering all aspects of embedded systems.

This year Mike Blee from Sarsen Technology is joining representatives from ECRIN Systems, VersaLogic and DAVE Embedded Systems to showcase all the latest and greatest innovations from these market leading companies.

ECRIN Systems www.ecrin.com	Hall 2 - Stand 449	This is the first time ECRIN Systems has exhibited at Embedded World. The new µONYX SWaP-C rugged system, based on the Intel Core i7 Skylake SoC will be on display, alongside their VPX COTS Boards, Mil-COTS and rugged systems. Embedded World will also be the first time visitors can see the brand new myOPALE modular system. myOPALE provides a simple solution for applications that need more I/O boards than can be fitted in a standard Industrial PC based on backplane PCB.
VersaLogic www.versalogic.com	Hall 3 - Stand 259	VersaLogic Corporation is the trusted name in embedded computer products. Featuring 5 to 10 year availability, -40 to +85° C operating temperature, MIL-STD 202G shock and vibration testing, and outstanding US-based support, VersaLogic products are ideal for critical applications that value ruggedness, reliability and long life. VersaLogic will be officially introducing their newest embedded computer product line at Embedded World. Built around ARM processors for low power, lower performance requirements using the COM Express form factor (95x125 mm), the EPC line offers designed in reliability and is validated to withstand extreme temperatures and high-impact/vibrations. The first board in the EPC family is the rugged Tetra (VL-EPC-2700)
DAVE Embedded Systems www.dave.eu	Hall 4 - Stand 481	DAVE Embedded Systems is a well-established Italian company, focussed on the design of highly complex miniaturised embedded electronic systems. This year DAVE Embedded Systems is celebrating their 20th anniversary, so join them at embedded world 2018 where they will be showcasing their past and present solutions with a new booth design. Their latest technology successes includes the Xilinx Zynq-based BORA SoM and their new range of single board computers.

Embedded World 2018 Photos:

DAVE Embedded - Hall 4 Stand 481

ECRIN Systems - Hall 2 Stand 449

Mike Blee from Sarsen Technology supporting DAVE

BittWare Releases Latest Version of BittWorks and OpenCL BSP for Arria 10 FPGA Boards

BittWare offers a complete range of FPGA boards designed to meet your needs. Their Arria 10 FPGA boards feature Intel’s high-end FPGAs to provide superior development productivity and unmatched performance. The latest boards feature PCIe x8 and x16 interfaces.

A10PL4	A10SA4
Intel Arria 10 GT/GX FPGA Low Profile PCIe Board with Dual QSFP and DDR4	Arria 10 GX Low Profile PCIe Board with QSFP and DDR4 on BittWare 'Spider' Thermal Platform
Datasheet	Datasheet

BittWare has put two decades of product design experience into creating a mature and robust suite of development tools that is tightly integrated with its FPGA products. These tools for system development and FPGA development shorten our customers’ learning curve while increasing their productivity, allowing them to reduce development costs and shorten their time to market.

OpenCL Bundle	BittWorks II Toolkit
BittWare’s OpenCL Developer’s Bundle provides the tools necessary to begin developing applications for the Altera Arria 10 or Stratix V using OpenCL. Open-CL dramatically simplifies FPGA development by enabling designers to code their systems and algorithms in a high-level C-based framework, directly generating FPGA programming files from a pure software development flow.	The BittWorks II Toolkit is a suite of development tools for BittWare’s FPGA-based hardware that serves as the main interface between the BittWare board and the host system. The Toolkit includes drivers, libraries, utilities, and example projects for accessing, integrating, and developing applications for the BittWare board.

• OpenCL BSP for Quartus 17.1.1 is now available for the A10PL4 and A10SA4. An updated Hello World example is also available for each board.

• Version 2018.1 of the BittWorks II Toolkit is now available. This is the first toolkit release of 2018. Software releases are numbered as the N'th release of the year. Software releases do not align with FPGA development environment software releases. This is a minor release. We recommend that you upgrade if you are using the Ubuntu operating system.

•  Release highlights: 

• Support for 4.10 kernel added for Ubuntu 16.04
• Fixed Ubuntu toolkit services
• Add missing BwShell functions

Please contact Sarsen Technology for more information.

We Aim To Please! Sarsen Technology and Customer Satisfaction

A good quality process drives a company, and ideally, involves everyone in producing a quality service or product.

We are constantly working to improve our quality processes, in order to provide the best possible service to our customers. We currently hold IS0 9001:2008 accreditation, and we are about to migrate to IS0 9001:2015 following a successful transition audit.

ISO is a global standard that promotes and supports the international exchange of goods and services. In layman’s terms this means they oversee everything to make sure the customer isn’t affected by bad practices at their suppliers. Many of our customers are unable to work with suppliers who don’t hold a recognised Quality certification, and so its very important that we maintain our ISO status.

One of our fundamental quality principles is to strive to improve customer satisfaction by planning for and successfully meeting customer requirements. By maintaining our already very positive customer satisfaction levels we hope to retain more repeat customers, because happy customers tend to be loyal ones.

We send out a formal Customer Satisfaction survey every year, but our account management team stays in regular contact with the people who use our products and they are on hand to support any commercial and technical questions they may have.

Rest assured, if you decide to work with Sarsen Technology we’ll endeavour to make sure it’s a positive experience all round!

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

White Paper - Intel Stratix 10 MX Devices Solve the Memory Bandwidth Challenge

White Paper

Intel® Stratix® 10 MX Devices Solve the Memory Bandwidth Challenge

Intel has put together a new White Paper to explain how the brand new Intel Stratix 10 MX family will help customers efficiently meet their most demanding memory bandwidth requirements.

"Conventional memory solutions have limitations that make it difficult for them to meet next-generation memory bandwidth requirements. This white paper describes the emerging memory landscape that addresses these limitations.

The Intel® Stratix® 10 MX (formerly Altera® Stratix 10 MX) DRAM system-in-package (SiP) family combines a 1 GHz high-performance monolithic FPGA fabric, state-of-the-art Intel Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge (EMIB) technology, and High Bandwidth Memory 2 (HBM2), all in a single package. The Intel Stratix 10 MX family helps customers efficiently meet their most demanding memory bandwidth requirements, which are not possible using conventional memory solutions.

This white paper describes the solution and explains how Intel Stratix 10 MX devices solve the memory bandwidth challenge for key end markets and applications."


Authors
Manish Deo
Senior Product Marketing Manager
Intel Programmable Solutions Group

Jeffrey Schulz
In-Package I/O Implementation Lead
Intel Programmable Solutions Group

Lance Brown
Senior Strategic and
Technical Marketing Manager
Intel Programmable Solutions Group

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