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.

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

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!

Conduant's 'Big River NTX16' in the Sarsen Spotlight

This week we're sharing all our trade secrets about the Big River NTX16 PCI Express Recorder from Conduant Corp!

Conduant Corp. designs and manufactures real-time, long-duration digital recording and playback disk systems. But unlike traditional general purpose disk storage, Conduant’s products ensure reliable, guaranteed and sustained performance in increments of 800 MB/s. Now thats something you don't see every day.....

The key to Conduant’s technology is the innovative way data is recorded; directly from a third party source, bypassing the bottlenecks that can occur in traditional recording systems.

The Big River™ NTX16 recording system provides up to 800 MB/s recording and playback performance in a 3U rack mount chassis. The system can operate independently from a host computer with command and control performed over a network connection. Control can be automated from a software application using the StreamStor® software API from a network connected computer.

A cabled PCI Express interface provides high speed connectivity to a host computer for command and control or data access, and can be used to connect to nearly any computing architecture, such as PCI Express, XMC, VME, VPX, VXS, AMC or other mezzanine / backplane environments.

Solutions are even available for connection to notebook computers!

Features include:

• Peer-to-peer PCI Express recording and playback capability
• Performance independent of host load
• Standalone capable operation with network command/control
• Sustained recording and playback at up to 800 MB/s
• Rear PCI Express cabling
• 3U chassis at only 21” deep
• Scalable data storage capacities up to 48TB
• Solid-state or magnetic disk drive media
• Cabled PCI Express (x8) for full speed data access

For even more information on the digital recording and playback systems from Conduant please get in touch with us here at Sarsen. There are 9 different ways... pick any one. But we'll have to whisper it.....!!