VersaLogic Announces ARM Based Embedded Computer Family

VersaLogic announced a brand new line of production-ready, ARM-based embedded computers at Embedded World 2018.

The Tetra is the first in the family, and provides a power-efficient, quad-core Single Board Computer (SBC) featuring a quad-core i.MX6 Cortex®-A9 32-bit processor. The board typically consumes about 4W of power when operating (not idle). It is ready for off-the-shelf deployment into demanding industrial applications requiring rugged, long-life, power-efficient, industrial temperature rated (-40° to +85°C) solutions.

VersaLogic Tetra Datasheet

Unlike many ARM-based "modules," VersaLogic's new line of ARM-based EPC (Embedded Processing Card) products are complete board-level computers. They do not require carrier cards, companion boards, connector break-out boards, or other add-ons to function.

For ease of mounting, and future upgrades, VersaLogic's ARM products are designed around the size and mounting points of COM Express products. Unlike proprietary-format ARM products, VersaLogic ARM boards provide a standard mounting pattern allowing for simplified upgrading in the future.

The Tetra matches the COM Express Basic footprint (125 x 95 mm) and offers a variety of I/O options for rugged, industrial applications. All three quad-core Tetra models feature a wide (8 to 17-volt) power input, making it ideal for 12-volt automotive applications.

More information

Many applications that require lower power or lower heat dissipation still need very high levels of reliability. VersaLogic's 10+ year formal life-extension program ensures long production cycles free from expensive changes and upgrades that come from short, disposable life cycles.

On-board I/O
A variety of on-board I/O includes a Gigabit Ethernet port with network boot capability, HDMI and LVDS video outputs, and two USB 2.0 Ports. Serial I/O (RS-232) and a SATA II interface or mSATA, support high-capacity rotating or solid-state drives.

CAN Bus, I2C and SPI are also included along with a 6-axis e-compass, and MIPI camera input. The on-board Mini PCIe socket provides flexible expansion using plug-in Wi-Fi modems, GPS receivers, Ethernet, FireWire, and other mini cards.

Industrial Toughness
Designed and tested for Industrial temperature (-40° to +85°C ) operation, VersaLogic's rugged Tetra meets MIL-STD 202G specifications to withstand high impact and vibration. It is engineered and validated to excel in unforgiving environments. Each component is carefully selected to ensure reliable operation in the field. With decades of embedded design experience, VersaLogic understands how to design in quality and reliability. U.S.-based technical support includes comprehensive assistance during project development.

Availability
The Tetra, part number VL-EPC-2700, is available from stock. Contact info@sarsen.net for more information.

Intel Releases Xeon D Processor Family

Intel has just unveiled a new range of Xeon brand processors. The new processor family, known as Xeon D, are a series of system-on-chip server processors designed specifically for blade and high density server systems.

Intel rarely announce new integrated platforms, and the Xeon D has caused a bit of excitement in the industry. Hailed as the previously unoccupied middle ground between Xeon E3 and Atom SoCs, the Xeon D takes the best bits of both and slots neatly into the market for the low-end server market, prioritising efficiency and networking.
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Xeon D, also known as Broadwell-DE, combines up to eight high performance Broadwell desktop cores and the PCH onto a single die, reducing both down to 14 nm for power consumption/die area. Dual integrated 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports natively support XAUI/KX4/KR to further enhance I/O capabilities, while reducing SWaP-C concerns. 24 PCI Express (PCIe) 3.0 lanes, eight PCIe 2.0 lanes, six SATA 6 Gb/s ports, four USB 3.0 ports, and four USB 2.0 ports provide many options for system expansion, connectivity, and storage. In addition to multiple 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports, the Xeon® D employs a Non-Transparent Bridge for PCIe to enable advanced connectivity options for multiprocessor systems.
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Alongside the announcement from Intel, Extreme Engineering Solutions, Inc. (X-ES) has introduced the XPedite7670 3U OpenVPX™ REDI single board computer module and its 6U VPX companion, the XCalibur4640, both based on the Intel® Xeon® D (formerly Broadwell-DE) processor family.

The XPedite7670 is a high-performance, 3U OpenVPX™ REDI, single board computer with support for up to 8 GB of DDR3-1600 ECC SDRAM. The XCalibur4640 extends the XPedite7670's functionality to a 6U VPX form factor with expanded capabilities. System memory capacity increases to 16 GB of DDR3-1600 ECC SDRAM and local storage increases to 128 GB of SLC NAND flash.

For more information on these brand new boards please contact the Sarsen Technology team on 01672 511166, or send us an email.

Altera Ships 20nm Arria 10 SoCs

Author - Laura

Altera has confirmed its leadership position in SoC FPGA products by shipping its second-generation SoC family. Arria® 10 SoCs are the industry’s only programmable devices that combine ARM® processors with a 20 nm FPGA fabric.

Embedded developers have a clear migration path with Altera for enhancing their next-generation systems. Arria 10 SoCs are fully software compatible with Altera’s previous 28 nm SoC product family allowing seamless software migration between generations. Arria 10 SoCs provide up to 50% higher performance and up to 4% lower power than the previous generation.

Altera SoC FPGAs enable smarter embedded systems by enabling single-chip product differentiation in both hardware and software. Combining ARM processors with FPGA fabric provides greater system value through reductions in power, costs and board space.

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Jeff Milrod, President and CEO of BittWare, says, "Altera’s Arria 10 is a true game changer. Native floating-point engines on these devices give system designers access to massive floating-point resources with tremendous ease-of-use and power efficiency in an FPGA. Classic signal processing applications can now interface analog signals directly to Arria 10 and process them there in floating point. For HPC and acceleration applications, FPGA algorithms no longer need to be ported to fixed point, nor do they need to be inefficiently implemented in fixed-point emulation of floating point. The Arria 10's native floating point provides more than 40 GFLOPS/W with a higher Fmax, while using only one-third of the logic resources. It is easier to use, lower power, faster, and less resource-intensive than any other alternative previously available.”

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For more information please contact Sarsen Technology - CONTACT US

Intel® Atom™ E3800 Solutions from Extreme Engineering Solutions

Author: Laura Biddiscombe

So here is something rather exciting for you....

Extreme Engineering Solutions, Inc. (X-ES) has introduced the XPedite8101 XMC/PMC and XPedite8150 Rugged COM Express® modules based on the Intel® Atom™ E3800 (formerly Bay Trail-I) processor family.

With Built-In Test (BIT) support, true configuration and obsolescence management, class III PCB fabrication and assembly, environmental qualification per MIL-STD-810, as well as many other features, X-ES E3800-based modules are designed and tested for maximum reliability in the most demanding environments and applications that require long life cycles. Also, instead of using a legacy BIOS-based bootloader, X-ES’s E3800-based modules support industry-leading boot times and drastically simplify system security by employing Intel’s Firmware Support Package (FSP) to power their open source coreboot bootloaders.

Full Press Release
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   Left to right

   XPedite8150 - Rugged COM Express Mini Module
   XPedite8101 - Conduction-or-Air-Cooled XMC/PMC Module
   XPedite8152 - Rugged COM Express Mini Module with NAND    Flash



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Wind River VxWorks and Linux Board Support Packages, as well as Microsoft Windows drivers, are available for the XPedite8101, XPedite8150, and XPedite8152. These products support the E3827, E3826, E3815, E3845, and E3825 processors from the E3800 series.

The E3800 series is the 4th generation Atom processor from Intel and was formerly known as the Bay Trail-I platform and Valleyview processor.

X-ES will be displaying the Intel® Atom™ E3800-based modules at the 2014 Intel Developer Forum (IDF14) in San Francisco, September 9th through the 11th. Stop by and visit the team at IDF in booth 661 of the Intelligent Systems Community, or contact Sarsen Technology today to find out more about using the Intel® Atom™ for your application.

International Space Station Video System Upgrade Leverages Multicore SBC Technology from Trenton Systems

Following the United Electronic Industries' Cube-controlled COLBERT astronaut treadmill up to the International Space Station, Trenton Systems hardware has been selected for a critical upgrade to it's Microgravity Sciences Glovebox NTSC analog video system.

The upcoming Microgravity Sciences Glovebox (MSG) Video Upgrade Equipment (VUE) from Teledyne Brown Engineering uses the TSB7053 single board computer and BPG7087 backplane from Trenton Systems, providing embedded multicore Intel processor technology incorporated into a PICMG 1.3 single board computer (SBC) architecture.

The new VUE is a digital upgrade that removes the need for tapes and the associated problems with transporting the physical media between Earth and the station. The upgrade to digital data means transmission to the ground can be made by telemetry networks, allowing to the ground science teams to access the data much more quickly, and start their analysis within days of any MSG experiment, rather than the multi-month wait time typical with the current analog tape system.

MSG-VUE Video Drawer Front Panel

There are a number of reasons that Teledyne Brown Engineering of Huntsville, AL choose to integrate a Trenton Systems long-life SBC and PCI Express backplane into the MSG VUE video drawer for controlling key elements of the microgravity test chamber:

• Longevity: Computer equipment deployed on the ISS must remain operational as long as possible
• Flexibility: The ability to support different types of PCI Express plug-in cards is extremely important
• Scalability: The ability to quickly add custom or standard COTS plug-in cards is a distinct advantage
• Bandwidth: PCI Express bandwidth and data throughput capabilities are critical in the MSG VUE

Ground tests are nearly complete on key mission parameters like radiation exposure and data operations, and the MSG VUE will be handed over to NASA for a planned deployment on the ISS in mid-2014. The computer, camera, sensor and monitor technologies deployed in the VUE will provide years of operational support for the advanced science experiments conducted on the International Space Station.

For more information you can read the complete article here - ISS Video System Upgrade Leverages Multicore SBC Technology

In the Spotlight - Trenton Systems Medical Imaging Technology

'Medical Imaging' is the process used to create images of the human body to reveal, diagnose, or examine disease or injury. There are a variety of types, each using specific technology to generate a different image.

Sarsen Technology supplies high speed data acquisition and powerful embedded computing hardware for these kinds of applications -

• Computed Tomography (CT Scanning)
• Digital Radiography
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
• Nuclear Medicine Imaging
• Medical Image Processing
• Cardiovascular X-ray

Advances in medical imaging technology mean image quality and rendering speed are always being improved. X86 multi-core processor innovations supply increased processing power while reducing cost and size, which allows departments like Ultrasound, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Nuclear Medicine Imaging (NMI) and Cardiovascular X-ray to benefit from advances in high performance computing and image processing.

Medical system technology also has very demanding support requirements. Once stringent medical equipment approvals are in place, customers rely on their suppliers for long-term product supply and support.

To meet the needs of the medical industry, Trenton Systems designs products with longevity and reliability in mind, using processors with 7 year availability and offering a 5 year factory warranty on single board computers, backplanes and embedded motherboards. Using dual Intel multi-core processors in conjunction with PCI Express Gen 2 bus technology means these platforms can easily satisfy high-bandwidth medical imaging applications.

For more information on the work that Trenton are doing in the medical technology market place please get in touch, either by phone +44 1672 511166 or email us - info@sarsen.net

Spotlight On… The First Exhibition of the Year!

It’s still only January, but we're not letting the snow hold us back - we are already gearing up for our first event of the year!

Sarsen Technology will be at the Low Latency Summit with BittWare, showcasing the latest Altera Stratix V FPGA hardware for financial trading.

Held at the America Square Conference Centre on 19th Feb 2013, the Low Latency Summit focuses on the evolution of high performance technology underpinning profitable automated trading strategies, with a focus on real life experience from the European marketplace.

This is the only event for the financial markets to examine these kinds of technologies, and align them to the trading process. Alongside the conference program, an 'exhibits' area will allow real-life solutions to be demonstrated.

BittWare recently announced special pricing on their S5-PCIe-HQ PCIe COTS board, specifically for use with Altera's Software Development Kit (SDK) for OpenCL. The Altera SDK for OpenCL enables FPGAs to work in concert with the host processor to accelerate parallel computation, at a fraction of the power compared to hardware alternatives.

Come and meet the BittWare and Sarsen Technology teams on Stand 105 to learn more about the very latest Altera Stratix V FPGA hardware and software technology including the OpenCL tools designed for low-latency financial trading applications.

Full details of the event can be found on the www.low-latency.com web site.

We look forward to seeing you there!!

Putting the spotlight on Danville Signal Processing

Danville Signal Processing, Inc. was founded in 1998 to manufacture products for the communication, audio, military and instrumentation markets using digital signal processing (DSP) technology as their core technology base. Sarsen Technology has represented Danville in the UK for over 10 years.

Solutions include:

• COTS DSP Boards and I/O Modules
• Embedded PCB assemblies
• DSP and FPGA combination solutions
• Standalone products
• Rack mount systems
• Custom board solutions

The dspblok family of products combine an Analog Devices SHARC DSP with the supporting circuits necessary to implement a powerful DSP Function Module.

Danville Signal's dspstak™ Engines are available for the latest Analog Devices SHARC® family processors. These modules generally consist of a DSP Processor, memory, power supplies and standard digital I/O such as RS-232 and USB.

The dsprak™ high performance audio platform is a semi-custom solution for OEMs. The basic 1U system supports 2 to 8 analog and digital inputs and 8 analog and digital outputs. Additional motherboards can be stacked to create larger systems with up to 32 channels.

Danville have also have gathered a number of DSP resources, ADI data sheets and application notes, DSP-related web sites and online tutorials to assist you in your DSP applications. They will continue to add information and resources to their website, to assist developers in gaining the DSP knowledge necessary to make their designs better, faster and more reliable.

Their goal is to become a repository of SHARC Related Resources and Reference Material for the DSP Developer. If you have a DSP trick, SHARC-related Article or Web Site that you'd like to add to Danville's reference library, please contact us and we will be happy to add it to the collection.

If you have any questions about Danville, or any of our other product lines, please give us a call on +44 1672 511166, or drop us an email.

BittWare's Anemone - A New Approach to Floating Point DSP

Ah-ne-MO-nee
It’s a word that is quite often mis-pronounced.
It’s not Ane-No-Me. Or worse – An-En-ema. Definitely not that!

BittWare’s first generation Anemone chip, the Anemone104 (AN104) is a completely scalable multicore processor with 16 eCores that provide a total sustained performance of 19.2 GFLOPS while consuming only 1 Watt of core power.

Featuring the Epiphany architecture from Adapteva, the BittWare Anemone combines the best assets of both FPGA and floating point DSP technology, thereby offering a completely new approach to floating point digital signal processing. The FPGA handles all the memory, I/O interfacing, protocol processing, and special functions, in addition to any computational tasks it may perform. This leaves the Anemone free to perform the complex processing tasks that DSPs are ideal for.

The AN104 features an internal high-throughput mesh network, with separate data paths for on-chip and off-chip communications. Total on-chip, inter-core bandwidth is 76.8 GBytes/sec full duplex, with an additional 8 GBytes/sec of off-chip bandwidth.

The BittWare Anemone Evaluation Kit provides a cost-effective way to begin evaluating the Anemone co-processor for FPGAs, featuring an Anemone104 and Altera Stratix III FPGA based evaluation board - ready to use out of the box, with the Ubuntu Linux OS and Anemone development tools installed on an included laptop.

This is pretty new technology – if you would like more information give the Sarsen sales team a call on +44 1672 511166 or send us an email.

VersaLogic launches BRAND NEW family of Embedded Single Board Computers

Roughly the size of a credit card and less than one inch thick, the Falcon is the industry’s smallest, lightest weight, and lowest power x86 rugged, embedded computer. 

The new Falcon EPU release from VersaLogic means we are talking to people about all kids of applications, including Mil-Aero, Medical, Security, R&D and Robotics. It’s a really compact board, (weighing under 40g) so it’s also a brilliant solution for use in for portable applications and unmanned systems where Size, Weight and Power consumption (SWaP) are critical design elements. 

It’s the first in a new family of VersaLogic Embedded Processing Units. EPUs combine processor, memory, video, and numerous system interfaces into an extremely compact embedded computer. 

Standard on-board features include up to 2 GB soldered-on RAM and a microSD socket. The standard Type 10 pin-out provides SDVO, LVDS, GbE, SATA, seven USB ports, three x1 PCIe lanes, two COM interfaces, HD audio, LPC, SDIO, GPIO, SMBus, and I2C to the baseboard. VersaLogic also offer an auxiliary board-to-board connector providing two additional COM interfaces, two GPIO lines, and one CAN interface. The Falcon is compatible with most x86 operating systems including Windows, Windows Embedded, Linux, and VxWorks. 

In a departure from their well-established high reliability PC/104 based product line, VersaLogic have applied the same strict quality and manufacturing practices to the PICMG Com Express form factor. Plus, offering a 5+ year availability guarantee and a 2 year warranty as standard on board level products you know your project is in safe hands. 

VersaLogic offer a 45 day evaluation scheme where you can 'try before you buy'. Evals are limited to single quantities of a specific product (including memory and development peripherals) and an evaluation survey needs to be completed before the product can be returned. 

If you would like more information on this exciting new product, or if you'd like to get your name on the list for an evaluation board please give us a call on +44 1672 511166, or email us - info@sarsen.net .

Things that have interested the Sarsen Team this week....

In no particular order -

Cake.
Fancy dress parties Something beginning with ‘F’ anyone?
Old money 12p = a shilling = 5p. Hmmm. 
Cockney Rhyming Slang

The XPedite7470 from Extreme Engineering (X-ES).

The XPedite7470 is a high-performance, low-power, 3U VPX-REDI, single board computer. It's based on the 2nd generation Intel® Core™i7 processor or 3rd generation Intel Core i7 processor and Intel QM67 chipset, and can be used in either the system slot or peripheral slot of a VPX backplane. Floating-point-intensive applications such as radar, image processing, and signals intelligence will benefit from the performance boost provided by the Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions (Intel® AVX) incorporated into the 2nd generation Intel Core™i7 processor. 

XPedite7470 from Extreme Engineering Solutions, Inc (X-ES)

This board has caught the attention of many design engineers and developers, because it’s ideal for the high-bandwidth and processing-intensive demands of today's military and avionics applications. 

Please contact Sarsen Technology for full details of the air-cooled and conduction-cooled variants of the XPedite7470 available. 
T +44 1672 511166      E - info@sarsen.net

The Sarsen Team would also like to congratulate Dan at BittWare on his upcoming nuptials this weekend. Best wishes to Dan from all of us!