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

 

BittWare Releases Arria 10 OpenCL BSPs for Altera OpenCL SDK 16.0.2 Release

BittWare has recently announced the availability of Arria 10 FPGA Board Support Packages (BSPs) for Altera's recently released OpenCL SDK 16.0.2, including support for production silicon.

See full press release

BittWare’s OpenCL BSPs allow customers to develop applications for the Altera Arria 10 1150GX FPGA using OpenCL quickly and easily. OpenCL makes FPGA development much simpler 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.

FPGAs can dramtically improve speed and increase responsiveness for many system designs, in markets as diverse as defense/aerospace, fintech and life sciences. BittWare offers BSP variants to support High Performance Computing (HPC) as well as Network Processing applications.


"We've worked closely with Altera to ensure that our OpenCL BSPs provide the best quality results possible," said Chad Hamilton, BittWare VP of IP, Software & Support. "For those customers who prefer to code in a C-based framework, our OpenCL BSPs provide the tools necessary to get them up and running quickly and efficiently."

OpenCL Developers Bundle
The BittWare OpenCL BSPs are included in the OpenCL Developer’s Bundle, which includes a BittWare Arria 10 or Stratix V PCIe board, the BittWorks II system development software, the Altera Quartus II soft­ware, and the Altera SDK for OpenCL. This competitvely priced development bundle gives developers access to the latest generation of high-performance FPGAs on a validated PCIe board, while also significantly reducing their time ­to market by using OpenCL to develop their application.

Benefits of OpenCL for FPGAs

• Faster time-to-market using the OpenCL C-based parallel programming language as opposed to low-level hardware description language (HDL)
• Quick design exploration by working at a higher level of design abstraction
• Easy design re-use by re-targeting existing OpenCL C code to current and future FPGAs
• Faster design completion by generating an FPGA implementation of OpenCL C code in a single step, bypassing the manual timing closure efforts and implementation of communication interfaces between the FPGA, host, and external memories.
• Increased performance by offloading performance- intensive functions from the host processor to the FPGA
• Significantly lower power than a GPU or multicore CPU by using the Altera SDK for OpenCL, which generates only the logic needed

Altera SDK for OpenCL Recognised at the 2014 Elektra Awards

Author - Laura

The Altera SDK for OpenCL has been selected by Electronics Weekly as its design tool of the year at the annual Elektra European Electronics Industry Awards gala in London. This award is the latest in a series of recognitions the Altera SDK for OpenCL has received since its release in 2012. 

Altera offers the industry’s only OpenCL-conformant solution in today's market that allows software programmers to easily implement OpenCL applications on FPGA accelerators.

Founded by Electronics Weekly in 2003, the Elektra European Electronics Industry Awards are the most prestigious product, technology and business awards in Europe, recognising the achievements of individuals and companies in the electronics industry. A panel of independent industry experts and representatives from Electronics Weekly selected the Altera SDK for OpenCL as the winner in its "Design Tools and Development Software” category.

Read Full Press Release 
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BittWare’s OpenCL Developer’s Bundle provides the tools necessary to begin developing applications for the Altera Stratix V using OpenCL. OpenCL 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 OpenCL Developer’s Bundle includes BittWare’s S5-PCIe-HQ (S5PH-Q) half-length PCIe board, the BittWorks II system development software, the Altera Quartus II software, and the Altera SDK for OpenCL. This development bundle gives developers access to the latest generation of high-performance FPGAs on a validated COTS PCI Express board, while also significantly reducing their time-to-market by using OpenCL to develop their application.

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About the Altera SDK
The Altera SDK for OpenCL allows programmers to develop algorithms with the OpenCL language and harness the performance and power efficiencies of FPGAs. The Altera SDK for OpenCL includes a rapid prototyping design flow that allows OpenCL kernel code to be emulated, debugged, optimized, profiled and re-compiled to a hardware implementation in minutes. The re-compiled kernels can be tested and run on an FPGA immediately, saving programmers weeks of development time. 

BittWare's Brand New PCIe Card Based on the Altera Arria® V FPGA

Author - Laura Biddiscombe

BittWare’s A5-PCIe-L (A5PL) is a low-profile PCIe x8 card based on the Altera Arria V GZ FPGA.

Up to 8 GBytes of on-board memory includes DDR3, QDRII/II+, or RLDRAM3. Two front-panel QSFP+ cages allow two 40GigE or eight 10GigE interfaces. The A5PL also features a Board Management Controller (BMC) for advanced system monitoring, which greatly simplifies platform management. All of these features combine to make the A5PL a versatile and efficient solution for network processing, security, broadcast, and signals intelligence applications.

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CLICK TO VIEW DATASHEET (PDF)

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BittWare offers complete software support for the A5PL with its BittWorks II software tools and FPGA Development Kit. Designed to make developing and debugging applications for BittWare’s boards easy and efficient, the software provides a collection of libraries and applications and FPGA components that provide preconfigured physical interfaces, infrastructure, and examples, drastically cutting development time and easily integrating into existing FPGA development environments.

Working example projects are available for each board which illustrate how to move data between the board’s different interfaces. Supported interfaces include DDR3, DDR2, QDR2/+, PCIe, 10GigE, LVDS, SerDes, and Double Data Rate I/O. All example projects are available on BittWare’s Developer Site.

For more information please contact  Sarsen Technology on +44 1672 511166, or visit www.sarsen.net.

BittWare's 6U VPX Channelizer System Receives Primetime Choices Award

BittWare's 6U VPX Channelizer System is a serious bit of kit.

Featuring the powerful BittWare S5-6U-VPX (S56X) FPGA COTS board and with complete software support, the system is supplied tested and configured meaning the development time is seriously reduced - perfect for time-critical applications.
The system functions as a complete development and testing platform, ideally suited to a wide variety of applications, including satellite communications, radar, and electronic warfare.

You might have seen the 6U VPX Channelizer System on the web recently - it has been all over the news after it was chosen as a Primetime Choices product by the editors of VITA Technologies.

A Word from BittWare
“We are very pleased that VITA Technologies has recognized BittWare’s Channelizer System as a Primetime Choice Product,” stated Darren Taylor, BittWare Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales & Marketing. “BittWare’s goal is to make life easier for our customers. Our Channelizer System does just that, giving our customers access to two Altera Stratix V FPGAs, an ARM Corex-A8 control processor, ADC, DAC, and a 6U VPX rear transition module for access to VPX I/O. All of this is fully integrated with superior software tools for a very seamless design process.”

Lets Get Technical
The single slot 2U VPX system features BittWare’s S5-6U-VPX (S56X) FPGA COTS board, which utilises high-density Altera Stratix V GX or GS FPGAs and two VITA 57 FMCs (FPGA Mezzanine Cards) with direct data connections to the on-board FPGAs.

An ARM Cortex-A8 handles the control plane, and an S56X rear transition module is included to provide rear panel I/O access, including 8 QSFP connectors for high-speed serial access, along with SFP, PCIe, GigE, SATA, JTAG, and LVDS.

With complete software support including BittWare’s ATLANTiS FrameWork, which enables reconfigurable data routing, the development system allows users to design and debug in a flexible environment. Hardware-in-the-loop support for Simulink provides an additional layer of flexibility, allowing rapid control prototyping and other real-time testing.

How Do I Get One of Those??
The 6U VPX Channelizer System (VRDP-CH) is available now. For more information please contact the Sarsen Technology team on +44 1672 511166, or send us an email - info@sarsen.net

Embedded Systems 'R' Us!

Here at Sarsen embedded systems are just what we do. They are our core business, and we’ve got a crack team of manufacturing partners that enable us to help you, the lovely customer, find solutions for your embedded computing requirements. It can be a challenge, so we offer a wide range of high quality, high reliability products that support a lot of different market sectors.

One of our newest additions to the product line, Dave, has risen to the challenge of embedded product development by designing and manufacturing complete devices, including both software and hardware. The result is a complete line of CPU modules, covering x86, ARM and PowerPC architectures, with high-end and entry level models.

Dave’s aim is to help customers save development time and engineering costs, which is why each CPU is available with its own evaluation board and development kit, so you can easily test all the features on the module.

The BORA is the newest high performance CPU module from DAVE, powered by the Dual Cortex-A9 with the FPGA "Zynq" XC7Z010 / XC7Z020 application processor from Xilinx. The BoraEVB-Lite is a carrier board designed to host the Bora system-on-module.
Features Include -

• 10/100/1000 Ethernet
• 1x USB OTG
• Serial port (RS232)
• 1x MicroSD
• External DDR3 SDRAM bank
• +12V power connector
• JTAG
• 2.54mm-pitch pin-strip connectors for Bora PS and PL configurable peripherals (MIO and EMIO interfaces, GPIOs, custom IPs ..)

For more information about the development kits from Dave, or evaluations for any of our products, please get in touch with our wonderful sales team on +44 1672 511166, or email us – info@sarsen.net

Have a great weekend!

Introducing the BORA from Dave

So, we have some exciting news for you today....

Our newest addition to the product line, Dave, has released their newest product - the Bora.

This is very exciting, because it could save you development time, resources and physical space, as well as give you increased flexibility, improved performance and a diverse set of peripherals.

The Bora is based on the recent Xilinx "Zynq" XC7Z010 / XC7Z020 Dual Cortex-A9 + Artix-7 FPGA application processor. Customers will benefit from using a compact solution that includes both a CPU and an FPGA, avoiding complexities on the carrier PCB. The Artix-7 FPGA integrated on-chip means you can develop your embedded system without sacrificing performance. The industrial temperature operation also enables designers to create rugged products suitable for harsh mechanical and thermal environments.

The BORA is suitable for a variety of high-end applications such as:

• Medical instrumentation
• Advanced communication systems
• Critical real-time operations
• Safety/Security applications

If you have any questions, or you'd like to know more about the new Bora from Dave, please give us a call on +44 1672 511166, or email us: info@sarsen.net

All New OpenCL Development Bundle now Available from BittWare

The OpenCL Development Bundle.

It’s new.

And it’s only available from BittWare.

BittWare joined the Altera Preferred Board Partner Program for OpenCL in May, and they have created the OpenCL Development Bundle for customers who want to take advantage of the benefits offered by using a Stratix V PCIe COTS board with Altera’s SDK for OpenCL.

Only certified boards are optimised for the most current Altera device architectures and design software. Altera works closely with selected partners to ensure that their certified boards continually meet these standards. BittWare’s S5-PCIe-HQ board has been certified by Altera to support the OpenCL SDK, and is available as part of the Development Bundle.

Included in the Development Bundle (BUN-OPENCL-001)-

• BittWare S5-PCIe-HQ Altera Stratix V GSMD5 or GSMD8 half-length PCIe board with two banks of 4GByte DDR3 SDRAM.
• S5PH-Q Board Support Package.
• BittWare BittWorks II Toolkit application development software for BittWare COTS boards.
• BittWare Breakout Board (BWBO) providing front panel access to signals and interfaces on the S5PH-Q.
• Altera Quartus® II software.
• Altera Software Development Kit (SDK) for OpenCL.
• Altera USB Byte Blaster to download configuration or program data into the Stratix V.

For more information about pricing, availability or technical support please give us a call on +44 1672 511166, or email us - info@sarsen.net.

What is OpenCL?
The OpenCL (Open Computing Language) standard is the first royalty-free, open standard framework that enables users to write programs that execute across heterogeneous systems including CPUs, GPUs, DSPs, and FPGAs. It allows the use of a C-based language for developing code across these different platforms.