30 Sep

4DSP’s FM788 Chosen by VITA as Featured Product

4DSP FM788 is VITA Editors Choice

One of 4DSP’s newest products, the FM788, is featured in the Fall 2014 issue of OpenSystems Media’s VITA Technologies as a Primetime Choices product (see page 23 of the PDF version here.) Some of the other topics covered in this issue of the magazine include reliability prediction methods, interoperability of VITA 46.11, and chassis management for VPX systems.

With eight 16-bit A/D channels running up to 250Msps, the FM788 is an FPGA-based XMC module based on Xilinx’s Virtex-7. It offers unmatched performance for such applications as beamforming, direction finding, RADAR, and satellite communications. The FM788 has the largest channel count in this frequency range and the most available onboard memory for real-time buffering of large data vectors. The four 10Gbps optical transceivers on this module can be connected directly to remote storage with no CPU involvement.

4DSP CTO Pierrick Vulliez had this to say about the FM788, “This approach of offering a way to digitize multiple analog channels, perform signal processing using the Virtex-7 and offload data to a storage system using optical connections on a single card overcomes the inherent limitations of bussed architectures.”

4DSP continues to push the envelope by providing more cutting-edge products in the FMC and FPGA form factors. We recently announced the release of the FMC144 A/D-D/A module along with two variants, the FMC140 and FMC142. With four 16-bit A/D channels with speeds up to 370MSPS and four 16-bit D/A channels up to 2.5GSPS, the FMC144 delivers high-bandwidth connectivity for calculation-heavy FPGA-based applications including beamforming and direction finding. It is very well-suited for multi-antenna arrays used in the telecommunications industry where high performance is required.

More new FMC products are planned for release before the year is out. We will share details as they become available.

14 Aug

The 4DSP CES720 is ideal for FMC Deployment

4DSP CES720

4DSP CES720

We are proud to highlight here in Austin the recent release of a new Compact Embedded System that is ideal for prototyping and development of high-speed data acquisition solutions. It is designed to serve as an embedded platform for deployment in UAVs or other applications with stringent size and weight requirements (SWaP-C). Known as the CES720, this small form factor, stand-alone system provides a complete and generic processing platform for data acquisition, signal processing, and communication.

The system is notable for both the performance it can deliver and its small size. Housed in an enclosure measuring about five inches square and three inches high, the highly portable CES720 weighs less than one kilogram. It features a low-power x86 CPU that is tightly coupled to a high-performance Xilinx Kintex-7 410T FPGA. This combination provides a flexible and powerful processing backbone for interfacing to the FMC site, CPU, and external DDR3 SDRAM, with plenty of room left over for Digital Signal Processing (DSP).

FMC inside CES720

FMC inside CES720

The flexibility of the CES720 allows users to customize the IO and DSP functionality of the system for a wide range of uses by choosing the FMC that best suits their needs. A removable panel on top of the enclosure allows easy access for installing an FMC chosen from 4DSP’s selection of 25 different modules. Alternatively, any one of a growing number of VITA 57.1-compatible cards from different vendors (more than 100, according to the VITA Standards Organization) can be installed in the CES720. The modularity of using FMCs with an FPGA carrier opens up opportunities to tailor a system for such applications as software-defined radio (SDR), beamforming, RADAR, and medical imaging among others.

Currently available as an air-cooled unit, the CES720 will also be released as a conduction-cooled Small Form Factor (SFF) solution later this year. Based on the emerging VITA 75 standard, the upcoming ruggedized version will be suitable for many applications where payload is limited. We will post more information about the new system here in the coming months.