Unrivaled Processing Performance on Rugged, Deployable Intel Xeon D Processor Boards

Since announcing their first single board computers (SBCs) based on the Intel® Xeon® D-1500 family of processors in 2015, Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES) has been busy, developing an industry-leading portfolio of embedded Xeon D products that is still growing.

These embedded SBCs provide designers with feature-rich computing solutions that are equally at home in a broad range of industries and applications, from challenging industrial environments to rugged defence deployments.

Originally available with up to eight cores, the Xeon D processors from Intel are now available with support for 12 and 16 cores in a single processor. Integrated on X-ES VPX SBCs, these high-performance, low-power processors are ideally suited for a variety of applications and infrastructure, including routers, network appliances, and battlefield communications.

Xeon D is also the first Intel processor with native extended temperature support, a key requirement for many defence and aerospace applications. Xeon D processors with up to 12 cores are rated by the manufacturer for an operating temperature range of -40⁰C to 85⁰C.

Keeping pace with strong demand from the defence and aerospace sectors, X-ES continues to introduce new products and features to their Xeon® D lineup. Their talented design engineering team draws upon an impressive breadth of experience with this architecture to minimise risk for even the most challenging designs.

There are a number of configurations available, including 3U VPX, 6U VPX, and COM Express form factors. For more information please contact Christos or Nigel who can discuss your application with you in detail.

A Little Local History... Samhain at Avebury

Here in Marlborough we are lucky to be 10 minutes from some of the oldest surviving Neolithic henge monuments in the country.

Avebury is one of the largest ceremonial sites in Britain, and was built over many centuries from 2850 BC until around 2200 BC. The monument itself is made up of a bank and a ditch, known as a henge, with a large outer stone circle and two separate smaller stone circles in the centre of the monument. Archaeologists have not been able to determine it's exact purpose, but they believe it was most likely used for some form of ritual or ceremony.

Many followers of contemporary Pagan religions such as Wicca and Druidry have adopted Avebury as a sacred site. Pagan rites at the site are performed publicly, and attract crowds of curious visitors to witness the event, particularly on major celebrations such as the summer solstice.

The ancient festival of 'Samhain' (pronounced saah-win) means Summer's End, and marks the end of the harvest season. It is the time of year when the veils between this world and the Otherworld were believed to be at their thinnest: when the spirits of the dead can cross back to join the land of the living. Non-Pagans might call it Halloween...

In Avebury one of the most popular Samhain ceremonies is the walking of the labyrinth. The labyrinth ritual builds on generic afterlife symbolism, and the people who take part walk a physical sacred pattern marked out by candles or markings in the grass itself. Samhain is seen by many as the start of a new year, so it's a perfect chance to reflect, unwind and let go of things while they walk the labyrinth.

As well as the labyrinth there are lots of fun activities happening this weekend as well as on 31st, including Tarot reading, ghost tours, craft workshops and book signings.

For more information pleas click on one of the following links:

• Avebury Samhain Labyrinth 2018
• Samhain Weekend Events - Avebury

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

 

September 2018 - Netcope Technologies Announces the Appointment of Sarsen Technology Ltd as UK Distributor

As you may have seen in the news this week and across social media, the team at Sarsen Technology Limited is very excited to be working with Netcope Technologies as their exclusive sales and marketing partner in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

If you haven't heard of Netcope Technologies they are about to make a big splash here in the UK.

Based in Brno in the Czech Republic, Netcope specialises in high-performance networking solutions, including state-of-the-art FPGA technology for packet capture, network packet processing (NPP) and low-latency trading applications.


Nigel Norman, Managing Director of Sarsen Technology Limited added, “The embedded FPGA market is changing fast as FPGA technology becomes ever more widely adopted. Our customers, especially in the cyber security, networking and financial trading markets, are looking for more complete solutions from Sarsen Technology rather than just FPGA hardware and software drivers".

Netcope Technologies has innovative, exciting and customer-proven FPGA solutions that have our engineering team chomping at the bit. Their 200GBPS Ethernet adapter will give our networking product customers a significant processing boost, and Netcope’s P4 smart NIC programming solution will rapidly change the way that network data plane processing is achieved.

FinTech customers won't miss out either - Netcope's wire speed packet capture processing is a game changer for low-latency packet processing and the low latency financial trading solution, Tradecope, is a powerful solution for our high frequency trading customers.

We are looking forward to busy but exciting times ahead!

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

We Take a Look at the Xilinx RFSoC

Way back in October 2017 Xilinx announced the delivery of their Zynq® UltraScale+™ RFSoC family. We've recently seen an upturn of enquiries about these devices, and with the Early Access/ silicon samples phase out of the way customers are very excited about the potential this technology can offer.

Photo: Xilinx.com

To create the RFSoCs, Xilinx built the analog directly into the popular MPSoC Zynq device, in the form of  high performance ADCs and DACs that feed directly into the Zynq interconnect fabric.

This means that the physical footprint and chip-to-chip latency is greatly reduced, and it also completely removes the external digital interfaces between the FPGA itself and the mixed-signal convertors.

Putting this RF quality analog function on an MPSoC opens up the playing field for a wide range of  commercial applications including test & measurement and high performance RF applications, with 5G wireless deployment right at the top of the list.

As SWaP is such a critical set of factors for the majority of defence applications military customers also benefit because the Zynq RFSoCs provide a combination of power efficiency, hardware flexibility and a reduction in required space, making them ideal for radar, early warning detection systems and man-portable communications equipment.

Based on 16nm UltraScale+ MPSoC architecture with an ARM Cortex-A53 processing subsystem and the highest signal processing bandwidth in a Zynq UltraScale+ device, the All Programmable RFSoCs monolithically integrate RF data converters for up to 50-75 percent system power and footprint reduction, and soft-decision Forward Error Correction (SD-FEC) cores to meet 5G and DOCSIS 3.1 standards.

There are now a number of proven Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC solutions available on the market. Please get in touch if you'd like to discuss an application with one of our engineers - info@sarsen.net or +44 1672 511166.

www.sarsen.net

MIL-STD Rugged 2U Server for High Performance Computing

 
We work with a significant number of military and industrial customers, and ECRIN Systems' rugged servers are an ideal solution for their high-performance computing requirements.

The OPALE V2-MIL family of compact, highly customisable rugged servers are used by the French Army and Navy for a wide range of applications, from secure communications to weapons control, radar and surveillance. Offering high-capacity data storage in a rugged, stainless-steel package, and able to withstand some of the most hostile environments they are particularly well suited for use at sea in harsh salt fog.

Many mil-aero applications are heavily restricted in terms of size, so the OPALE V2-MIL has been designed to fit in a standard 19" rack. It's 2U height and less than 50cm depth gives customers high-end computing performance in a compact footprint.

ECRIN takes care of the full system development and guarantees long term availability to allow customers to concentrate on their own added value. Customisation is straightforward, even in small quantities. From mechanical parts to industrial design including user LED’s and I/O’s, as well as front and rear connectors, users can simply set up the system and let it run without issue, even in marine environments where the sea salt can cause other chassis to rust.



Features:

Up 0°C/46°C operating	EMI/RFI: AECTP500 with power line filter
-35°C/+71°C storage	47.6 dBA
RH: 93%@40°C non-condensing	Intel® Xeon® E5-2600 v4/v3 series
Altitude: 0-3500m operating	Xeon Scalable series, on demand
Salt Fog protection	7x slots low-profile I/O
15g@20ms on Z-axis	Up to 6x removable 2.5’’ SSD (12TB)
First natural frequency > 80Hz	MIL-Circular connectors, on demand

For more information including full technical datasheet please contact the Sarsen Technology engineering team on +44 1672 511166 or via email: info@sarsen.net

 

Obsolescence Management for Rugged, Embedded Computers

We are fortunate to work with a lot of really great companies across the entire globe, and Extreme Engineering is one of the best.

Extreme Engineering Solutions (X-ES) is a world leader in the design, manufacture, and support of embedded computing solutions for compute-intensive military, communications, commercial, and industrial applications, provides a product portfolio of commercial-grade to fully ruggedised boards and systems.

The X-ES product line features the very latest in Xilinx FPGA, ARM Cortex, Intel i7 technology and NXP PowerPC processors. SBCs from X-ES are available in a number of form factors - 3U and 6U rugged VPX boards, XMC, VME, CompactPCI and 6U LRM.

See more - XES Products

Their specialty is custom services, from modified COTS to full-scale custom designs, getting you the technology you need in the shortest possible time frame. All of X-ES' products are backed by the best possible customer support, from both X-ES and their global distribution network, and they are committed to providing full life cycle support for their products.

To provide customers with information, flexibility, and control over the products they depend on, X-ES offers three configuration and obsolescence management options.

Level 1 - Change Notice	Level 2 - Change Control	Level 3 - Life Cycle Control
All customers have access to a complimentary Change Notice. Any time a Major (Class I) Engineering Change Order (ECO) occurs, X-ES will issue a Product Change Notification (PCN) and then post it to the X-ES online customer information resource, SupportNet. To be automatically notified of such changes, customers may also subscribe to email notifications of updates to SupportNet.	For customers who need to closely manage changes to their product’s design, X-ES offers Change Control. Under this upgraded configuration management option, designated customer contacts will receive notification for all Major (Class I) ECOs. They then have the option to accept or reject those changes.	Life Cycle Control includes configuration and obsolescence management, ideal for customers with long project lifecycles. Along with the Change Control configuration management offered in Level 2, X-ES proactively monitors obsolescence notification sources and issues an obsolescence notification form to designated customer contacts. Life Cycle Control provides options to lengthen the life of projects as products age and their components reach End-of-Life (EOL). When an obsolescence notification is issued, X-ES provides an impact assessment, along with details for last-time buys of components, substitute components, and product replacements/ re-designs as appropriate, thus ensuring product availability for several years to come.

For more information please contact Sarsen to discuss your application with one of our engineers.