General Standards - Frequently Asked Questions

General Standards Corporation develops and manufactures the highest-performance Analog I/O, Digital I/O and Serial I/O products based upon a variety of buses such as PMC, PCI, VME, PC/104 and cPCI.

Their extensive product line (currently over 70 different products) includes I/O boards, high speed links, cables,and software drivers, all designed to increase your system performance, improve your software integration, and maximise your development productivity.

As part of their ongoing commitment to customer satisfaction General Standards has put together answers to their most frequently asked technical support questions.

You can also visit the website, www.generalstandards.com, for the latest product brochures and upcoming product announcements.

If you'd like to see the technology in the flesh please visit us on Stand S4-453 at DSEI 2015, where we will be showcasing a number of General Standards products.

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

FIPS 140-2 and Common Criteria Certified Router Featuring Cisco IOS Technology

Author - Laura

Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES) is commited to providing high quality, cost-effective hardware and software solutions for the embedded systems market. Alongside their extensive range of high-performance single board computers (SBCs) and rugged, extended temperature systems X-ES provides a range of rugged routers running Cisco™ IOS® IP routing software.

Designed to meet the needs of the most demanding and Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) constrained mobile and embedded networking applications each router supports four routed, high-speed Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, enabling the routers to serve as an aggregation point for on-demand network connectivity in mobile or fixed deployments. The X-ES routers extend the Cisco enterprise infrastructure beyond the reach of traditional fixed-network infrastructure for military, oil and gas, mining, smart grid, heavy construction, transportation, homeland security, public safety, and disaster recovery applications.

• XPedite5205 Embedded Services Router (ESR) - a PMC/XMC-based router
• XPand6004 - a rugged packaged router in a Small Form Factor (SFF) enclosure
• Cisco 5940 - a 3U CompactPCI router

On September 10th, 2014 the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cryptographic Module Validation Program issued Certificate #2242 for the X-ES XPedite5205 XMC/PMC Cisco IOS® Embedded Services Router (ESR). The XPedite5205 has been validated to FIPS 140-2 Overall Level 1 by an NVLAP-accredited Cryptographic Module Testing (CMT) laboratory. Additionally, this ESR has been validated to Roles, Services, and Authentication Level 2, and Design Assurance Level 3.

On November 17th, 2014 the National Information Assurance Partnership issued the Common Criteria Certificate for the XPedite5205 XMC/PMC Cisco IOS® Embedded Services Router (ESR) for completion of the evaluation in accordance with the Common Criteria Evaluation and Validation Scheme (CCEVS). The XPedite5205 satisfies the Assurance Activities criteria as defined within the Common Criteria (CC) Protection Profile for Network Devices, Version 1.1 and Protection Profile for Network Devices VPN Gateway Extended Package, Version 1.1.

For more information please contact Sarsen Technology on +44 1672 511166 or send us an email with your enquiry - info@sarsen.net

XMC/PMC and Rugged COM Express modules for high-temperature environments introduced by X-ES

Author - Laura Biddiscombe

We have a little treat for you - the brand new XPedite8101 Express Mezzanine Card and PCI Mezzanine Card (XMC/PMC) and XPedite8150 Rugged COM Express modules from Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES) have been featured in an article written by the editor of Military & Aerospace Electronics, John Keller.

Based on the Intel Atom E3800 processor family (formerly Bay Trail-I) these embedded computing modules are designed and tested for maximum reliability in the most demanding environments and applications that require long life cycles.

Read the full article

X-ES supports the Atom E3800 processor in industry-standard XMC/PMC and Rugged COM Express modules, enabling system integrators to develop a single x86-based application on modular hardware solutions that can be tailored for the performance and environmental constraints of each platform.

The XPedite8150 Rugged COM Express Module from Extreme Engineering Solutions

For more information or to request a quote please contact Sarsen Technology on +44 1672 511166, or drop us an email.

FMC Cards available from BittWare

FPGA Mezzanine Cards (FMC) are being used to support a wide range of I/O interfaces in a variety of marketplaces and environments; from commercial spec to fully ruggedised and conduction cooled applications.

The new S5PE-F from BittWare includes an FMC site, which provides high-performance SerDes and LVDS, along with clocks, I2C, and JTAG connected to the Altera Stratix V FPGA. The site is based on the VITA 57 mezzanine standard for FPGA I/O, which allows designers to customise the S5PE-F to their individual needs with optional FMC I/O boards.

Vita 57 provides a specification describing "an I/O mezzanine module with connection to an FPGA or other device with reconfigurable I/O capability". The low profile FMC design gives you the option of which industry standard slot card, blade and motherboard form factors you want to work with, including VME, VPX, CompactPCI, and PCI, amongst others. FMC also compliments existing common low profile mezzanine technology such as PMC and XMC.

Benefits of FMC

• Technology Advantages
  With the ever increasing advances in I/O, new FMC modules can be interfaced to an existing FPGA carrier. And vice-versa - when next-generation FPGAs become available you can use your existing FMC modules with the new FPGA carrier to take advantage of the latest FPGA technology.
• Cost
  Being able to repurpose FMCs will help you reduce both your development costs and recurring costs across multiple programs. If you use a COTS FMC, like the range available from BittWare, you can make real cost savings as developers don't have to design their own boards.
• No Instructions Required
  You don't need to be an expert in standards like PCI or Serial RapidIO to use an FMC.
• Data Transfer
  To meet the demands of high-performance embedded computing, the FMC connector can support very high bandwidths. Individual signalling speeds up to 10 Gb/s are supported, with a potential overall bandwidth of 40 Gb/s between mezzanine and carrier card.

BittWare offers a range of Vita-57 FMC modules, which provide power supply and temperature monitoring as standard, and offer flexible control of clock source, sampling frequency, and calibration.

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

Have a great weekend!

Sarsen Technology Manufacturer Profile - Tech Source, Inc.

Established in 1987, Tech Source has been a pioneer in high performance computer graphics hardware solutions for 25 years.

The company has evolved over the years, now serving several markets that include Air Traffic Control/Management (ATC/ATM), avionics, military and embedded systems with several COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) and custom products.
The product range includes graphics, imaging and video capture boards, H.264 encoders and high compression video recorders.

From designing graphics processing units (GPUs) and high compression encoders to FPGA targeted special graphics/imaging algorithms the company has a broad range of knowledge and offers product customizations and new product delivery in a matter of months.

Tech Source XMC and PMC graphics products can be used with most Single Board Computers (SBCs) in various form factors such as VME, CPCI, and ATCA that are most often found in military and defense applications.

The Tech Source Condor series of embedded products for Mil/Aero applications consists of high performance COTS XMC or VPX form factor graphics and video solutions. Air or rugged conduction cooled variants offer Open GL/3D, H.264, video windowing plus GPGPU capabilities. Linux, Windows and RTOS drivers are supported. A key product is the Condor 3000x which is based on the AMD Radeon 6760 GPU and offers exceptional performance with immersive desktop-level 3D graphics and outstanding multimedia features.

For more information on Tech Source or any of our other manufacturers please give us a call on +44 1672 511166, or email us.

www.sarsen.net

Analog Input Module from General Standards Corp....

Here at Sarsen we are always excited when one of our manufacturers releases a new product.

General Standards have recently announced a wide-range 24-Bit, 16-channel, 105KSPS analog input module, with 16 wide-range (high-Level, low-Level) delta-sigma input channels.

It’s available in PMC, PCI, cPCI and PC104-Plus and PCI Express form factors, and uses the PMC form factor as a basic template.

The 24DSI16WRC is packed with features, including -

- 16 wide-range differential 24-Bit simultaneously-sampled analog input channels. 

- Input sample rates to 105 Kilosamples per second per channel. 

- Software-selectable analog input ranges of ±10mV, ±100mV, ±1V, ±10V. 

- Delta-Sigma input conversion minimizes or eliminates the need for antialias filtering. 

- 256K-sample analog input FIFO buffer.

- Continuous and Burst One-shot sampling modes.


- Sample clock source selected as internal or external. 

- Supports multiboard synchronization of analog inputs. 

- On-demand internal offset and gain autocalibration of all analog inputs. 

- 4-Bit bi-directional digital port. 

- Software-controlled master clock frequency fine-adjustment. 

- 66MHz PCI support, with universal 5V/3.3V signaling and DMA support. 

- Large FPGA supports optional features such as counter/timers.

Optimized for flexibility and performance, the board is ideal for a wide variety of applications, ranging from simple precision voltage measurements, to the analysis of complex audio signals and waveforms. 

Each of 16 analog input channels contains a lowpass image filter, and a delta-sigma A/D converter that provides inherent antialias suppression and sharp cutoff lowpass filtering. An internal voltage reference can be applied to all channels to support self-test operations and auto calibration.

Contact the Sales Team at Sarsen Technology for more info.......