Compact Modular RFSoC Solutions

The boundary-pushing team at Annapolis Micro Systems has taken a pioneering approach to delivering powerful RFSoC functionality. Their WILD FMC+ RFSoC Cards are compact modular solutions that operate standalone. If your application is very processing-intensive they can be paired with a WILDSTAR 3U or 6U VPX or PCIe Baseboard.

The concept behind Annapolis' RFSoC Cards is simple: to provide full RFSoC functionality in a small, flexible package that has solved the most demanding circuitry, signal integrity, and packaging challenges. No small feat.

Xilinx’s Zynq® UltraScale+™ RF System-on-Chip (RFSoC) combines multiple elements that were formerly discrete operations. In defense and military applications like C4ISR and radar, Size, Weight, Power and Cost (SWaP-C) considerations are crucial. Applications like UAVs, backpacks, handheld devices, and custom-integrated applications are increasingly subject to smaller spaces and power sources.

Following an intensive design and manufacturing process Annapolis' RFSoC cards provide turnkey solutions ready for immediate deployment within any standard OpenVPX or PCIe system, or within Annapolis’ proven 100Gb Ethernet WILD100™ EcoSystem. They are also compatible with SOSA™-aligned Boards and Systems.

If you require high-performance RFSoC-enabled data digitisation, processing or storage in a compact, rugged environment, these WILD RFSoC Cards are for you. Contact us to have an engineer recommend the best approach for your application.

©2020 Annapolis Micro Systems, Inc.

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.

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.

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)

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.

FPGAs - Right For Your Application?

Simply put, a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit that can be programmed after manufacturing.

In 1985 Xilinx co-founders Ross Freeman and Bernard Vonderschmitt invented the first commercially viable FPGA. Two decades later, Freeman was entered into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for his invention.

FPGAs allow designers to adapt or completely change their designs very late in the production cycle– even after the end system has been manufactured and deployed in the field. You can configure an FPGA to be as simple or as complex as you require, but an FPGA does nothing by itself. FPGAs store their configuration in RAM, meaning that once they the power is switched off they lose their configuration. They must be configured every time power is applied.


To get started. the designer needs to create a bit file for the FPGA. Once it's loaded the FPGA will behave like the digital circuit you designed. FPGAs have large resources of logic gates and RAM blocks to implement complex digital programs. Similar to a PLD, but whereas PLDs are generally limited to hundreds of gates, FPGAs support thousands of gates. Thanks to their programmable nature, FPGAs are an ideal fit for many different markets.

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Extreme Engineering (X-ES) has designed and manufactured a line of high-performance FPGA processing modules in industry-standard XMC and 3U VPX form factors. These rugged, configurable modules include features such as FMC sites and daughter cards to simplify I/O compatibility for many different applications.

X-ES also has extensive experience integrating FPGAs with Intel® and Freescale-based SBC and I/O platforms into a wide range of customer-specific and SecureCOTS designs. With the combination of superior signal processing capabilities as well as high speed A/D and D/A conversion, these modules are ideal solutions for high-end RF signal acquisition, SDR, and DSP requirements.

Check out the FPGA Development Kit (FDK) whitepaper from X-ES for an in-depth review of how to integrate their FPGA capabilities into your application.

Extreme Engineering Solutions

X-ES Announces 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7 Processor Support Across Seven Industry Standard Form Factors

It's official. You heard it here first....

Our friends at Extreme Engineering Solutions, Inc. (X-ES) have introduced their new family of SBCs based on the 4th generation Intel® Core™ i7-4700EQ processor (formerly codenamed "Haswell").

We are all very excited about this news, as the 4th Gen Intel Core i7 processor has some serious advantages, including increased raw processing performance per watt, hardware-based memory encryption with Intel® AES New Instructions (AES-NI), and increased floating-point and integer performance utilising Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions 2.0 (AVX 2.0). The GPU has also been enhanced, adding additional execution units and up to a 24% increase in raw performance.

If that isn't enough for you, the 4th generation Intel Core i7 processor also supports OpenCL 1.2, allowing it to perform as a general-purpose graphics processing unit (GPGPU).

One size doesn't fit all...
Variety is the spice of life, so X-ES has incorporated the new Intel Core i7 processor on a range of form factors, including 3U VPX, 6U VPX, XMC, 3U CompactPCI, 6U CompactPCI, 6U VME, and COM Express. The new line up of conduction and air-cooled 4th generation Intel Core i7 products from X-ES includes the XCalibur4500 6U cPCI, the XCalibur4530 6U VME, and the XCalibur4540 6U VPX modules, which maximise I/O capabilities and add configurability with two PMC/XMC sites.

They have also introduced the XPedite7570 3U VPX and XPedite7530 3U cPCI modules - ideal for space constrained aerospace and vehicle platforms that require maximum processing performance and I/O capabilities, with the flexibility of PMC and XMC support. For applications with extreme size, weight, and power (SWaP) challenges X-ES also offers the XPedite7501 XMC and XPedite7550 Rugged COM Express modules.

XCalibur4530 from X-ES

For more information about the new boards from X-ES, featuring the 4th Generation Intel Core i7 processor, please give us a call on +44 1672 511166, or email the sales team at sales@sarsen.net

Busy Little Beavers..... Embedded Applications keeping the Sarsen Team busy...

Now everyone is back in the office, and we are back to full capacity after the summer holidays, it’s time to start thinking about the next few months, and look at the projects that will be keeping us busy until Christmas and beyond! (Only 126 days to go!)

 

Our main focus is the High Speed Financial Trading market. BittWare’s Altera Stratix V FPGA PCIe hardware is optimised for this industry. With multiple lanes of 10GigE straight to the FPGA, and PCI Express Gen 2, combined with on-board memory and optional TOE, as well as additional built-in support for 40 GigE and PCIe Gen3, the financial industry has taken notice!

The new Falcon EPU release from VersaLogic means we are talking to people about all kids of applications, including Mil-Aero, Medical, Security, R&D and Robotics. It’s a really compact board, (around the size of a credit card, and weighing 40g) so it’s also a brilliant solution for use in for portable applications and unmanned systems where Size, Weight and Power consumption (SWaP) are critical design elements.

X-ES customers are also keeping us busy with enquiries, in particular about the XPm2020 and XPedite7470 boards. The 7470 is a high-performance, low-power, 3U VPX-REDI, single board computer based on the 2nd generation Intel® Core™i7 processor or 3rd generation Intel Core i7 processor and Intel QM67 chipset. The XPm2020 is a VITA 62-compliant 3U VPX power supply that takes in a MIL-STD-704 28V-DC input voltage and provides up to 300W on 3.3V, 5V, and ±12V at up to 90% efficiency. Both are available now.

Show and Tell….

We love talking about our products, and we have loads of sample boards we can show you, so If you would like one of our sales team to visit you onsite, to discuss how the products we sell can work in your applications, please give us a call on +44 1672 511166 to arrange a meeting.