BittWare Acquires nCk Research and Forms Network Products Group

BittWare has announced the acquisition of nCk Research, a network solutions provider with a portfolio of FPGA intellectual property (IP) designed for BittWare’s PCIe boards.

nCk’s staff joined BittWare as employees under a newly-formed Network Products group. Craig Lund, formerly with CSPI-Myricom, will lead BittWare Network Products as V.P. and General Manager.

www.bittware.net


The new group’s first product, based on nCk’s groundbreaking IP, was recently announced at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. The StreamSleuth is a network packet processing appliance, providing Xilinx UltraScale+ FPGA-based accelerated monitoring, filtering, and routing at 100 GbE line rate.

“Building on the recent success of our horizontally-focused FPGA Platform business and the acquisition of nCk, it is huge step for BittWare to launch a vertically-focused network solutions group,” said Jeff Milrod, President & CEO of BittWare. “The addition of Craig’s leadership and extensive history of successfully driving new technology into emerging markets makes me confident that we will be able to quickly combine our world-class FPGA platforms with our innovative IP to deliver compelling network products to a market desperate for 100 GbE solutions.”

nCk Research had initially chosen BittWare’s FPGA solutions for prototyping their 100 Gbit/s IP. The unique approach and features of the IP so impressed BittWare that a collaboration was formed to accelerate the product development time. This grew into a need for closer access to BittWare’s software and hardware engineering teams, resulting in the acquisition in the second half of 2016.

Craig Lund joined BittWare in January, 2017 as V.P. and General Manager of the newly-formed Network Products group. Craig’s extensive knowledge of the capabilities—and limitations—of today’s high-speed network hardware and software plus his decades of experience leading teams in product development ensures the products BittWare creates are a match for the real-world needs of sophisticated, high-end network users.

BittWare Currently Exhibiting at MILCOM 2014

Author: Laura Biddiscombe

Event: MILCOM 2014 - Find out more
Location: Baltimore Convention Center - Baltimore, MD
Date: October 06. 2014 - October 08. 2014

It's not too late to catch BittWare in Baltimore, MD, at the 33rd MILCOM event.
Attracting decision-makers from government, military, academia, and industry, MILCOM gathers military and government communications subject matter experts from around the globe to conduct in-depth discussions about the latest in technology advancements. This event is an ideal forum for industry to demonstrate the application of these technologies and to promote products and services that provide reliable solutions to today’s mission-critical challenges. Hundreds of technologies and solutions are being demonstrated right now.

BittWare are currently showcasing a host of their Altera FPGA-based hardware, including:

The Terabox - Integrated FPGA PCIe Platform

• 20 TeraFLOPS processing: 16x Altera Stratix V GX/GS FPGAs
• 1.28 Terabits/sec I/O
• 6.5 Terabits/sec memory bandwidth
• 4U or 5U Rackmount PCIe system (server, industrial, or expansion)

and the Channelizer – Integrated FPGA 6U VPX Platform

• 19” 2U rackmount enclosure
• 1-slot backplane
• BittWare Stratix V FPGA-based 6U VPX board
• 4-channel, up to 5 GSPS, 8-bit ADC
• 2-channel, 5.6 GSPS, 14-bit DAC
• 6U VPX rear transition module for access to VPX I/O

Join BittWare on Booth #419 at MILCOM until October 8 in Baltimore...

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 

Countdown to DSEi 2013. And Christmas.

90 days until Christmas.
   ...142 days until Valentine's Day.
      ...... 350 days until DSEi 2013!!


 
Yes indeed! 
Its time to get our thinking caps on again, and come up with some ideas on how to make our week more successful than ever before.

DSEi 2011 was a great exhibition for Sarsen Technology; we spoke to loads of new people about our broad range of embedded hardware, and came away with lots of follow up to do, with new opportunities and projects to investigate. It was also a great way for us to show off our new branding..

This time, with our new logos and colour scheme in place, it will be even more focussed on the products, with more demonstration units than ever before, and plenty of experts on hand from our manufacturers to help us answer any questions you might have. We'll be showcasing single board computers, FPGA technology, digital signal processing, data acquisition and high-speed data recording COTS technology, as well as integrated rugged ATR chassis systems and industrial 19" rackmount embedded computing systems.


This year our manufacturers have released many new products, with even more scheduled for production before Christmas. DSEi is a great opportunity to come and see all the new designs and technologies from the defence and security industry's brightest bods. 

Last year we ran a competition to win an iPad.... Who knows what you could win at DSEi 2013!?