Conduant Corp | Adding a Conduant StreamStor® Recorder to a Xilinx FPGA Board

Conduant has written an easy to digest app note (with pictures) discussing the significant benefits of adding one of their StreamStor-based Cobra recorders to a Xilinx FPGA module. 

Why Should I Read It?

Xilinx FPGAs are used on a wide variety of boards with PCI Express and optical interfaces that can be used for a wide range of user-defined applications. Some of these applications may produce a high-speed stream of data to be recorded while others may require the injection of a continuous-speed data stream.

Conduant's Cobra Recorder/Player is designed to record and/or play back real-time data streams and is capable of sustaining very high data rates. It is easily optically interfaced with many different Xilinx boards and is the perfect companion product where this capability is needed.

Conduant StreamStor® can record or play back real-time data streams at rates up to 20 GB/s (160 Gb/s or 1 Terabyte every 50 seconds) regardless of the type of data (RF, RADAR, imaging, etc.). This application note focuses on the optical connection. Since StreamStor® products are designed with Xilinx FPGAs, they are highly configurable and easily interface with Xilinx development boards or other Xilinx-based designs.

Almost any Xilinx development board that has high-speed serial optical lanes can connect with StreamStor® using one of many different protocols (Aurora, Interlaken, Serial RapidIO, etc.).

Ok, Tell Me More...

This application note will show:

• It is easy to add a StreamStor® recorder/player to a Xilinx board.
• A method of adjusting between endpoints of different lane widths.
• A method of adjusting between transceivers of different types. 

About

App Note written by Phil Brunelle, Conduant Corp. Nov 5, 2019.

Founded in 1996 as Boulder Instruments, Conduant has quickly become a leader in ultra-fast, long-duration digital recording and playback systems. Conduant Corporation designs and manufactures real-time, long-duration digital recording and playback systems. In environments where large volumes of high-speed data are generated (e.g. radio astronomy, video imaging, radar, electronic surveillance), Conduant's StreamStor® products excel at error-free recording and playback

Black Holes and Revelations - Supporting the Capture of the World’s First Image of a Black Hole

Earlier this year you may have been one of the millions of people to have seen the very first picture of a black hole. Albert Einstein first predicted the existence of black holes in 1916, with his general theory of relativity.

Because no light can escape, scientists haven’t been able to view black holes in the same way that we see stars and other objects in space. But astronomers have at last captured an image of the  phenomenon.

The image, which looks like a donut of light surrounding a black centre, is of a black hole located 55 million light-years from Earth in a galaxy known as Messier 87, and was taken with the help of one of our manufacturing partners, Conduant.

Credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

"The data used to generate the image was recorded on storage systems made by Conduant. The systems recorded signals from giant telescopes in real time with multiple radio antennas spaced across the globe", said Ken Owens, co-founder and CEO of the company.


Each antenna, fitted with atomic clocks, made a simultaneous time-stamped recording of the radiations from the black hole region analyzed later by super computers to form an actual image. The data had to be recorded in real time.

“Our systems are similar to standard IT storage systems. But our technology is about control systems and data movement from antennas to storage devices,” Owens said.

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About Conduant

In environments where large volumes of raw, high-speed data are generated (radio astronomy, high-resolution video imaging, radar surveillance) the StreamStor® product line from Conduant excels at error-free recording and playback. Unlike traditional tape-based systems or general purpose disk storage, Conduant’s ultra-fast digital data recorders and storage units ensure reliable, guaranteed and sustained performance, unparalleled in the industry.

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.....!!

Whats All That Noise? High Speed Recording for Radio Astronomy from Conduant

Working at Sarsen Technology exposes us to all kinds of exciting industries, few more exciting (in my opinion!) than space exploration.

Many of our manufacturers support applications outside our little earthly bubble, or are involved with projects that aim to push the boundaries of discovery further than ever before.

Conduant Corp have been working with MIT Haystack Observatory on a Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) solution.
Haystack Observatory is an interdisciplinary research centre of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) focused on radio astronomy, geodesy, and atmospheric science. MIT Haystack Observatory's project was to define and develop the next generation recording and playback system (known as Mark V) for use among the world's VLBI radio astronomy community.

Radio astronomy/Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) — Using multiple antennas to collect data from space to study other galaxies and phenomena such as black holes, quasars and pulsars.

Traditionally, the VLBI community has used large, reel-to-reel tape systems for recording and playback. These tape-based systems were not capable of high-speed recording, and maintenance costs continued to rise. Tape is difficult to search (i.e., no instant random access ability, requires rewinding) has become more expensive than disk. MIT concluded that the next generation of VLBI data systems should be based on commercial off-the-shelf components (COTS) using magnetic disk technology and standard IDE hard disk drives.

Conduant solution

The ideal solution for MIT combined low cost drives and a hardware configuration optimized for sustained high-speed recording. In early 2001, using an existing StreamStor® system, MIT put together and successfully demonstrated an ultra-fast, disk-based solution in less than two months costing less than one-tenth of existing tape-based system. 

 

 The Mark 5 VLBI data system, jointly developed by Haystack Observatory and Conduant Corporation, records data on removable magnetic-disk modules at sustained data rates to 1 Gbps. The system can also be used to move VLBI data over high-speed global networks directly from telescopes to correlators around the world. 

Today, MIT is using the latest StreamStor® technology to record data continuously, for days at a time, at sustained rates of 1 GB/s.

"StreamStor® has a lot of potential applications in other disciplines, too. Military, intelligence, as well as the radio noise from distant galaxies."
- Dr. Alan Whitney of MIT Haystack Observatory 

March Edition of News Bytes now online

The March 2012 edition of News Bytes includes news stories on BittWare Anemone™ Co-Processor for FPGA Boards, The Low-Latency Summit for financial trading 2012, Wildcat PCI-104 SBC with Intel Core 2 Duo processor, MIL-COTS LCD Touchscreen Monitor With Sealed Keyboard, United Electronics Industries (UEI) to Exhibit at ITEC 2012, Conduant SNAP12 Optical FPGA Card, BittWare BittWorks II Release Notes and Electronic Engineering Journal: Reducing Power Consumption and Increasing Bandwidth on 28-nm FPGAs.

Link to the March News Bytes Newsletter:

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