REFLEX CES and Sarsen Technology Announce Partnership

Sarsen Technology is pleased to announce that it has been named by REFLEX CES as sales and marketing partner for their high-speed FPGA based solutions in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Based in Paris, France, REFLEX CES is a well-known and trusted supplier to major OEMs across the world and is established in numerous markets such as High Frequency Trading, High Performance Computing, Government, Cyber Security and Network Acceleration.

REFLEX CES offers solutions for both evaluation and prototyping using the latest FPGA technology solutions based on Intel FPGA or Xilinx FPGA, including COTS, modified COTS, or full turnkey designs. Their FPGA boards have almost limitless applications and can be easily adapted to fulfill new projects and customers’ specifications.

REFLEX CES

XpressGX S10-FH200G
200G Stratix 10 FPGA PCIe Board

Nigel Norman, MD Sarsen Technology says, “The Sarsen Technology team has great experience in supplying and supporting Intel and Xilinx FPGA based technology solutions to demanding UK and Irish customers. We work with the leaders in the cyber security, high speed trading and telecoms infrastructure markets.  REFLEX CES has exciting and innovative FPGA boards and system level solutions that are ideal for our customer’s applications. We look forward to working closely with the REFLEX CES team to continue to grow the use of FPGA technology solutions.”

“We are delighted to work with Sarsen Technology and expand our customer base in the UK and Ireland, like many regions in the world where REFLEX CES High End FPGA boards and modules are already leading the market. We trust them with their professionalism and knowledge of high-end FPGA boards, and look forward to starting this partnership,” stated Eric Penain, Chief Business Officer of REFLEX CES.

Since their inception in 2000, REFLEX CES’ team of highly skilled engineers has been focused on designing mid-to-highly complex boards and systems, which are all supported by their significant experience in hardware, firmware, software, mechanics, CAD and signal integrity.

For more information about the new relationship and how it could benefit your application please contact Sarsen Technology on +44 1672 511166, or email info@sarsen.net.

For more information about REFLEX CES, please email sales@reflexces.com  or go to www.reflexces.com

BittWare Releases Latest Version of BittWorks and OpenCL BSP for Arria 10 FPGA Boards

BittWare offers a complete range of FPGA boards designed to meet your needs. Their Arria 10 FPGA boards feature Intel’s high-end FPGAs to provide superior development productivity and unmatched performance. The latest boards feature PCIe x8 and x16 interfaces.

A10PL4	A10SA4
Intel Arria 10 GT/GX FPGA Low Profile PCIe Board with Dual QSFP and DDR4	Arria 10 GX Low Profile PCIe Board with QSFP and DDR4 on BittWare 'Spider' Thermal Platform
Datasheet	Datasheet

BittWare has put two decades of product design experience into creating a mature and robust suite of development tools that is tightly integrated with its FPGA products. These tools for system development and FPGA development shorten our customers’ learning curve while increasing their productivity, allowing them to reduce development costs and shorten their time to market.

OpenCL Bundle	BittWorks II Toolkit
BittWare’s OpenCL Developer’s Bundle provides the tools necessary to begin developing applications for the Altera Arria 10 or Stratix V using OpenCL. Open-CL 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 BittWorks II Toolkit is a suite of development tools for BittWare’s FPGA-based hardware that serves as the main interface between the BittWare board and the host system. The Toolkit includes drivers, libraries, utilities, and example projects for accessing, integrating, and developing applications for the BittWare board.

• OpenCL BSP for Quartus 17.1.1 is now available for the A10PL4 and A10SA4. An updated Hello World example is also available for each board.

• Version 2018.1 of the BittWorks II Toolkit is now available. This is the first toolkit release of 2018. Software releases are numbered as the N'th release of the year. Software releases do not align with FPGA development environment software releases. This is a minor release. We recommend that you upgrade if you are using the Ubuntu operating system.

•  Release highlights: 

• Support for 4.10 kernel added for Ubuntu 16.04
• Fixed Ubuntu toolkit services
• Add missing BwShell functions

Please contact Sarsen Technology for more information.

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

Intel Developer Forum - 16th-18th August 2016

The Intel Developer Forum offers everything you could possibly need to make sure you're at the forefront when it comes to the latest technology.

As well as a world class forum schedule, including a keynote address from Brian Krzanich, the Technology Showcase offers you unprecedented access to the world’s most exciting products. You'll have the opportunity to ask your toughest questions, or find an ingenious solution to your design challenges.

Ready to meet you at the IDF will be the team from Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES). You will find them on stand #730, where you'll be among the first to see the latest and greatest embedded boards and solutions, based on Intel's Xeon D, Atom E3800 and Core i7 processors.

Click the button to find out more about the rugged Intel-based boards from X-ES.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

With the acquisition of Altera by Intel, the Altera SoC Developer Forum (ASDF) is now the Intel SoC FPGA Developer Forum (ISDF). ISDF is dedicated to the technology and application of SoC FPGAs across a wide range of design areas, including networking and communications, data centre and cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT).

The theme of this year's event is Acceleration:

• Accelerate your design - with hardware acceleration in SoC FPGAs
• Accelerate your development process - with leading edge design tools and ecosystem support
• Accelerate your learning - by attending ISDF 2016

The ISDF16 event is taking place on day 3 of the Intel Developer Forum, and our friends at BittWare will be there showcasing the new Altera Arria 10 PCIe board platforms alongside their OpenCL solutions, including the popular OpenCL Bundle . The bundle includes a BittWare Arria 10 or Stratix V FPGA-based PCIe board, board support package, BittWorks II Toolkit-Lite system development software, Altera Quartus II software, and the Altera SDK for OpenCL.

For more information about the IDF, ISDF or any of the products from BittWare or X-ES please get in touch with the Sarsen Technology engineering team on +1672 511166 or send us an email - info@sarsen.net

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 
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________


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.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

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 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...

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

OpenCL support for even more Altera Stratix V variants on BittWare's S5-PCIe-HQ PCIe board...

The Open Computing Language (OpenCL™) programming model is supported on Altera’s Stratix® V FPGA architecture and BittWare’s Stratix V FPGA COTS hardware, providing an incredibly powerful solution for system acceleration.

BittWare is a member of Altera’s Preferred Board Partner Program for OpenCL.

The S5-PCIe-HQ (S5PH-Q) Altera Stratix® V half-length PCIe COTS board is optimised for the most current Altera device architectures and design software, and is supported by Altera’s SDK for OpenCL. The Altera® SDK for OpenCL provides a design environment enabling users to easily implement OpenCL applications on Altera’s FPGAs.

BittWare announced at SuperComputing 2013 (Nov) that OpenCL support has now been expanded to additional Stratix V variants on their S5-PCIe-HQ (S5PH-Q) PCI Express board. FPGA options now include GSMD5, GSED8, GXEA7 and GXEAB devices.

What Are the 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 by using the Altera SDK for OpenCL which generates only the logic needed to deliver. 

BittWare’s OpenCL Developer’s Bundle provides the tools necessary to begin developing applications for the Altera Stratix V using OpenCL, including the S5PH-Q board, a breakout board, the Altera Quartus II software, the Altera SDK for OpenCL, and the Altera USB Byte Blaster for downloading configuration and program data to the Stratix V FPGA.

The Open CL Developers Bundle is available at a special introductory price. For more information please contact the Sarsen Team on +44 1672 511166, or email us - info@sarsen.net

BittWare 6U VPX Platform for Electronic Warfare and Radar Applications

BittWare’s EW & Radar Development System is a complete development and testing platform specifically designed for, you guessed it, electronic warfare and radar applications.

The single-slot OpenVPX system includes a BittWare Stratix V FPGA-based 6U VPX board along with a rear transition module for convenient I/O access, and arrives tested and configured, speeding up the development process for time-critical applications.

The platform includes:

• 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
• BittWorks II Development Tools

It also includes two VITA-57 FMCs for high bandwidth data transfer to and from the FPGAs on the S56X board. An ADC FMC provides 1, 2, or 4 8-bit A/D channels at up to 5 GSPS, directly to one of the S56X FPGAs. A DAC FMC provides 2 14-bit D/A channels at 5.6 GSPS, directly to the second FPGA on the S56X.

The BittWare EW & Radar Development System will be available for demos in the UK from mid-November. Please contact us if you would like to see the system put through its paces!

Email - info@sarsen.net 
Tel - +44 1672 511166

The Sarsen Technology diary is filling up nicely for September 2013...

September is going to be a busy month for Sarsen....

We’re taking part in the Dream Marketing Defence and Aerospace Roadshow, which is a 3 week travelling exhibition visiting some of the UK’s biggest design and manufacturing facilities, giving us the opportunity to demonstrate a variety of leading edge technologies directly to the engineers and developers (who don't always manage to visit more traditional trade shows!).

But before all that excitement, we have the small matter of a little show in London. You may have

heard of it….

The DSEI exhibition is the world’s largest defence and security event, bringing together the entire industry to introduce the latest equipment and systems, develop international relationships, and generate new business opportunities.

We are going to be joining Elie Gasnier, V.P. Sales and Marketing, on the Ecrin Systems stand – N7-468. Ecrin will be showcasing the small form factor MIL-STD-810 ‘ONYX’ embedded computer, a fanless system driven by an Intel Core i7 processor. Compact and rugged, the ONYX is an ideal choice for space constrained applications and harsh environmental conditions.

Rugged ONYX Embedded Computer from Ecrin Systems

We are also going to be joining the Alterateam on stand S6-300, where we’ll be supporting some exciting Stratix V BittWare hardware. Altera will be running a live demo on the new
EW & Radar Development System, which, as its name suggests, is a development and testing platform designed specifically for electronic warfare and radar applications. The EW and Radar Dev System is a single-slot OpenVPX system including a BittWare Stratix V FPGA-based 6U VPX board, with a rear transition module for easy I/O access.

EW & Radar Development System from BittWare

If you’re going to be at DSEI from 10-13 September 2013 why not get in touch and arrange a meeting with the team, or pop by stand S6-300 or N7-468 for an informal chat.

All the way from across the pond.... Sarsen welcomes visitors from BittWare next week.

Next week Sarsen are playing host to Jeff Milrod and Chad Hamilton from BittWare, and we’ll be taking them into the city to visit some of our customers in the Financial Services sector.

Chad Hamilton and Jeff Milrod of BittWare

BittWare has designed and developed a family of PCIe format Altera Stratix V FPGA hardware optimised for this marketplace. These kinds of applications require ultra-low latency feed handling as well as super fast analysis and data correlation. BittWare offers FPGA-based PCIe COTS solutions to address the challenges of developing financial applications.

S5-PCIe - Altera Stratix® V GX/GS FPGA PCIe board from BittWare

High frequency automated financial trading uses simulations to provide real-time assistance in decision making. With multiple lanes of 10GigE straight to the FPGA and PCI Express Gen 2, combined with on-board memory and optional TOE, as well as additional built-in support for 40 GigE and PCIe Gen3, the financial industry has taken notice of BittWare’s’ range of Stratix V boards.

In addition to the hardware, the Open Computing Language (OpenCL™) programming model is now supported on Altera’s Stratix® V FPGA architecture and BittWare’s Stratix V FPGA COTS hardware, providing an incredibly powerful solution for system acceleration.

BittWare's OpenCL Bundle is available from Sarsen Technology

For more information about how these solutions could benefit your application please get in touch with the Sarsen Team, on +44 16672 511177, 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.

What exactly is High Speed Financial Trading?

It's 'Financial February' here at Sarsen, so we thought it was a good idea to describe exactly what Financial Trading is, specifically the High Speed Financial Trading that we've been focussing on over the last few weeks.

In layman’s terms, it’s the use of very powerful computers programmed with sophisticated instructions to trade stocks and make profits from minute price variations that occur in less than a second.

Simples!

High Speed Financial Trading, or High Frequency Trading (HFT) doesn’t actually have anything to do with ‘investing’ as we know it, it’s simply a set of computing instructions that react to information much faster than any human can. These trades can make significantly less than 1p per share, but if you add up the millions of trades per day you’re looking at a respectable chunk of money!

‘Pretty complex stuff’, I hear you say...

Fortunately BittWare has designed and developed a growing family of PCIe format Altera Stratix V FPGA hardware which makes it easier for customers to create system solutions for financial acceleration.

The challenges in this space are quite unique:

• Require ultra-low latency feed handling
• Faster analysis/data correlation
• Maximum performance/watt (minimize energy and thermal requirements)
• Desire for scalable architecture to enable “FPGA Farm” implementation

‘Low-Latency’ is the real buzz word for HFT, with the solution offering the lowest latency being the most attractive to prospective customers.

The BittWare S5-PCIe-HQ half-length PCIe board, which features the Altera Stratix V FPGA, provides systems developers with a high level of system integration, and high-performance network processing, signal processing, and data acquisition possibilities.

For more information get in touch with the Sarsen team on +44 1672 511166, or email us – info@sarsen.net

Out and about with Sarsen Technology - this week the Low Latency Summit 2013, London!

So it's been another busy week for the Sarsen Technology sales team.

Alongside our friends at BittWare we participated at the Low Latency Summit in London, which gave us a great platform to show off the new half length Stratix V PCIe board from BittWare, and tell everyone all about the Altera OpenCL support (and special pricing!) for BittWare FPGA hardware.

Robbie and Nigel at the Low Latency Summit Feb 19th 2013

It was a well attended event, with some great networking opportunities for new and existing customers, as well as some thought provoking seminars focussing on how low latency, cloud and big data technologies are combining to support automated trading.

The Low Latency Summit has been running in London since 2010 at the America Square Conference Centre. It's a modern building with a genuine bit of history too, as the original London Wall, (one of the largest construction projects carried out in Roman Britain) runs right through the venue, providing a fascinating and unique feature.

The Roman Wall at the America Square Conference Centre

This is the second time Sarsen have attended the show, and it won't be the last. Check out the photos below!

Nigel and Jeff Milrod (CEO- BittWare) at the Low Latency Summit 2013

Nigel and Jeff chatting to attendees at the Low Latency Summit 2013

Ron Huizen (VP Technology, BittWare) demonstrating OpenCL support for BittWare FPGA boards

'Financial February' from Sarsen Technology!

You’ve reached the Sarsen Blog. Lucky you!

If it’s your first visit, welcome. If you’ve been here before, welcome back! If you accidentally clicked the wrong link you should stick around… You might learn something!

We started 2013 with Green Month. January has seen our blog feature some pretty cool technology involved in renewable energy, global warming data collection, utility monitoring and wind turbines, as well as our super-informative Spotlight Series.

This month is ‘Financial February’. We’ll be bringing you all the latest product news for the high speed financial trading market, available from our 10 US manufacturers. We will also be sharing all the insider news and views from our exhibition stand at the Low Latency Summit on February 19th in London. We’ll be on stand 105 alongside BittWare and their latest Altera Stratix V FPGA hardware and software technology, with a very special feature showcasing the OpenCL tools designed for low-latency financial trading.

If that wasn’t enough we’ll also be shining the Spotlight on another member of the Sarsen team, and sharing some more trade secrets about the exciting technology we are lucky enough to be involved with.

See you on Tuesday for the first Sarsen Spotlight post of February 2013!

The Twelve Days of Christmas. Sarsen Style.

Today is the twelfth of the twelfth of the twelfth. So we're carrying on the theme and bringing you the Twelve Days of Christmas, in our own special way.

(Feel free to join in....)

On the first day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

A BittWare Anemone

On the second day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

On the third day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

On the fourth day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

On the fifth day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Five Copperheads,

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

On the sixth day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Six RACKtangle chassis

Five Copperheads,

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

Well done guys, half way through....

On the seventh day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Seven Half-length Stratix V boards,

Six RACKtangle chassis

Five Copperheads,

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

On the eighth day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Eight Amazon Streamstors,

Seven Half-length Stratix V boards,

Six RACKtangle chassis

Five Copperheads,

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

On the ninth day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Nine Tech Source Condors

Eight Amazon Streamstors,

Seven Half-length Stratix V boards,

Six RACKtangle chassis

Five Copperheads,

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

On the tenth day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Ten General Standards boards,

Nine Tech Source Condors

Eight Amazon Streamstors,

Seven Half-length Stratix V boards,

Six RACKtangle chassis

Five Copperheads,

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

Nearly there, keep going!

On the eleventh day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Eleven Iguanas,

Ten General Standards boards,

Nine Tech Source Condors

Eight Amazon Streamstors,

Seven Half-length Stratix V boards,

Six RACKtangle chassis

Five Copperheads,

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone

On the twelfth day of Christmas,

Sarsen sent to me

Twelve Trenton Backplanes,

Eleven Iguanas,

Ten General Standards boards,

Nine Tech Source Condors

Eight Amazon Streamstors,

Seven Half-length Stratix V boards,

Six RACKtangle chassis

Five Copperheads,

Four dspBloks

Three Cisco Routers,

Two UEI Cubes

And a BittWare Anemone!

Hurrah! Next up, We Wish You a Merry Christmas.......

Sarsen By Numbers - Friday Facts from the Team at Sarsen Technology

12 – The number of years Sarsen Technology has been supplying embedded hardware solutions to our UK customers.

10 – The number of US-based manufacturers we currently represent.

5 – Exciting new board variants from VersaLogic released this year.

8 – Ways to contact us….
The obvious ones; email, phone and direct contact through the website.
The retro choice – fax and snail mail.
For the social butterfly – LinkedIn, Twitter or even a visit to the office here in Marlborough. We like visitors….

830 – The number of hits on our blog last month. We are actually very interesting….

3 – New COM Express modules from Extreme Engineering. For more info click here…

25 – days until Christmas!!!

5 – Twitter feeds from the team here at Sarsen.
@Laura_Sarsen
@Nigel_Sarsen
@Robbie_Sarsen
@Embedded_Tim
@Sarsen_Tech

24 – Current issue of NewsBytes, released today. There are lots of new technology releases from our manufacturing partners this month including OpenCL support for Altera Stratix V FPGA COTS boards, plus a new technical paper on "many-core" strategy written by Jeff Milrod, President of BittWare.

½ - The new S5-PCIe-HQ from BittWare is a half-length PCIe x8 card based on the Altera Stratix V FPGA. Check it out here.

2 – Number of times we have had cake in the office this week. Soon to be 3.

Have a great weekend!

Busy Little Beavers..... Embedded Applications keeping the Sarsen Team busy...

Now everyone is back in the office, and we are back to full capacity after the summer holidays, it’s time to start thinking about the next few months, and look at the projects that will be keeping us busy until Christmas and beyond! (Only 126 days to go!)

 

Our main focus is the High Speed Financial Trading market. BittWare’s Altera Stratix V FPGA PCIe hardware is optimised for this industry. With multiple lanes of 10GigE straight to the FPGA, and PCI Express Gen 2, combined with on-board memory and optional TOE, as well as additional built-in support for 40 GigE and PCIe Gen3, the financial industry has taken notice!

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, (around the size of a credit card, and weighing 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.

X-ES customers are also keeping us busy with enquiries, in particular about the XPm2020 and XPedite7470 boards. The 7470 is a high-performance, low-power, 3U VPX-REDI, single board computer based on the 2nd generation Intel® Core™i7 processor or 3rd generation Intel Core i7 processor and Intel QM67 chipset. The XPm2020 is a VITA 62-compliant 3U VPX power supply that takes in a MIL-STD-704 28V-DC input voltage and provides up to 300W on 3.3V, 5V, and ±12V at up to 90% efficiency. Both are available now.

Show and Tell….

We love talking about our products, and we have loads of sample boards we can show you, so If you would like one of our sales team to visit you onsite, to discuss how the products we sell can work in your applications, please give us a call on +44 1672 511166 to arrange a meeting.

High Frequency Trading speak to CEO Jeff Milrod about BittWare's FPGA development for the Low-Latency Financial Market

High performance computing using FPGA technology is a key technology for the financial services industry. High frequency automated financial trading uses models and simulations to provide real-time assistance in decision making. 

BittWare has designed and developed a family of PCIe format Altera Stratix V FPGA hardware optimised for this market. BittWare CEO Jeff Milrod has been speaking to High Frequency Traders about how this technology has made the low-latency financial market very excited.....

HFT: BittWare has been in business for quite a while, but you’ve only got into the financial space comparatively recently. How did this come about?

Jeff Milrod: "We’ve been producing commercial off-the-shelf signal processing boards and high performance computing boards since 1989 and they’ve been used in a wide variety of markets over the years.

Military is big component of our business as are wireless telecommunications, high-end instrumentation and medical imaging. More recently, we’ve actually had the finance market come to us. In the last couple of years it has decided that FPGAs are very attractive platforms for reducing the latency and increasing the performance of a lot of their applications. It just so happens that we have some of the best FPGA boards in the world. We were approached by financial market customers who thought our engines could work very well for them, so we’ve been working hard to learn more about the market and to figure out how to modify our boards slightly and add additional IP to create better solutions for the finance space.

One thing that’s unique about what we do, particularly compared to some of our competitors in the finance market, is that we consider ourselves a horizontal enabling technology. It’s expressed in our slogan ‘Essential building blocks…Innovative solutions.’ We want to provide building blocks for our customers and allow them to add the unique vertical application-specific value themselves. We don’t believe that’s our role. There’s a commonality across all markets for the underlying processing engines – be they implemented with signal processors or FPGAs – with relation to high speed data movement, power conditioning and control, thermal management and obsolescence management for deployed world class system solutions."

The full interview can be found here - High Frequency Traders.

Please give us a call on +44 1672 511166 if you would like any more information!

Altera Stratix® V GX/GS PCIe Board with VITA 57 FMC I/O Site or Dual QSFP+. Copyright BittWare.

BittWare to Exhibit at SIFMA 2012

June 19-20, 2012         Hilton New York

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) Tech Expo draws the top technology exhibitors providing services to the financial services industry. It brings together the shared interests of hundreds of securities firms, banks and asset managers. These companies are engaged in communities across the country to raise capital for businesses, promote job creation and lead economic growth.

BittWare has designed and developed a family of PCIe format Altera Stratix V FPGA hardware optimised for the financial trading market.  Ron Huizen, Darren Taylor and Chad Hamilton from BittWare will be exhibiting at SIFMA next week on booth #1823, showcasing their (growing) Stratix V family of PCIe cards.  

More than 70 senior regulators and industry experts will participate in 29 educational sessions on the foremost issues facing financial technologists, and the event is expected to bring together more than 4,000 industry-leading professionals to discover the latest trends and solutions.

If you would like to visit BittWare at the SIFMA Tech Expo please give us a call on +44 1672 511166 to arrange a time.

Please contact Sarsen Technology for full details of the full range of PCIe format Altera Stratix V FPGA hardware and software developed for this market. E - info@sarsen.net 

http://www.sarsen.net/dept/financial-trading_d0145.htm