Category Archives: Critical Link News

MitySOM-335x Helps Bring Maker Prototypes to Market

Critical Link is pleased to announce the MitySOM-335x Maker Transition Kit. Makers can now convert prototypes based on the BeagleBone Black with Texas Instruments AM335x ARM processor to production-suitable designs leveraging Critical Link’s proven MitySOM platform.

The Maker Transition Kit has been designed to minimize changes required for those transitioning from the BeagleBone Black, and in many cases is a drop-in replacement. Interested developers can visit Critical Link’s engineering site to review all design documentation and engage with our engineering team.

“Leading-edge designs come out of the maker community all the time, but often high potential prototypes encounter hurdles on the path to production,” says Thomas Catalino, Vice President, SOM Solutions at Critical Link. “Undocumented design changes, availability, design for manufacturability, and production costs can all derail a great product design making it to market. Our new platform helps overcome many of these challenges.”

The BeagleBone Black continues to be one of the most popular maker development platforms. It follows the community-supported model which provides numerous advantages in initial hardware costs, open source design documentation, and a large user base of talented developers willing to lend support. To take designs to market however, developers may need to step away from the community-based model and find a reliable partner to supply and support their production needs.

“Critical Link designs boards for industrial applications, meaning our customers can rely on us for long product lifespans and reliability in the field,” says Catalino. “We provide all design documentation for our base boards, and work with customers to customize designs, adding features and minimizing recurring costs as needed. Our goal is to help developers successfully launch their ideas.”

The Maker Transition Kit was introduced to select developers in late 2016, and was met with tremendous response that consumed all initial supply. General availability is projected later in Q1 2017. To order, contact the Critical Link sales team or visit https://www.criticallink.com/product/mitysom-335x-maker-transition-kit/.

About Critical Link

Syracuse, N.Y.-based Critical Link (www.criticallink.com) is an embedded systems engineering firm offering customizable system-on-modules (SOMs) for industrial, medical, scientific, and defense applications. Critical Link’s end-to-end product engineering services include design, development, and production. Critical Link is a Platinum Member of the Texas Instruments Design Network and is ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 14001 Registered by SRI Quality System Registrar.

Critical Link is pleased to announce support for Altera’s SDK for OpenCL on our MitySOM^®-5CSx module. With this, customers now have a path to work with OpenCL in a general purpose SoC-based board, exploring the benefits of OpenCL for solving real-world problems.

OpenCL is an open framework for writing programs across an array of processing platforms. FPGA programming has proven to be a major hurdle for development teams who are inexperienced with FPGAs or are resource limited. OpenCL allows users to work with FPGAs in common programming languages such as C and C++, enabling software engineers to readily tackle this otherwise complex task.

In addition to featuring familiar language options, OpenCL allows developers to accelerate their application and drive power efficiency, providing opportunity to developers of unmanned and autonomous systems, or wherever temperature or power constraints exist.

With this Board Support Package, Critical Link is providing an off the shelf embedded platform with a first class out-of-the-box experience to help Altera customers rapidly build from source and see live examples in action. The MitySOM-5CSx module has been tested to run examples using Altera’s SDK for OpenCL integrated with version 16.0 of the Altera Quartus Prime and SoC Embedded developer’s kit.

The MitySOM-5CSx OpenCL BSP is available today as a downloadable file provided via Critical Link’s engineering support site. This site also contains instruction for use under a Linux or Windows environment. In the future, files and examples will be included on SD card images provided with MitySOM-5CSx development kits to allow users to run the examples without the need to compile them.

For customers developing imaging applications, contact Critical Link for an update on implementation of the OpenCL BSP on our MityCAM imaging development platforms.

For specifications or information on purchasing a MitySOM-5CSx module or development kit, visit https://www.criticallink.com/product/mitysom-5csx/.

About Critical Link

Syracuse, N.Y.-based Critical Link (www.criticallink.com) is an embedded systems engineering firm offering customizable system-on-modules (SOMs) for industrial, medical, scientific, and defense applications. Critical Link’s end-to-end product engineering offerings include design, development, and production services. Critical Link is a Platinum Member of the Altera Design Solutions Network and is ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 14001 Registered by SRI Quality System Registrar.

Critical Link is pleased to announce the exceptional results being achieved by the first wave of customers getting to production using its MitySOM^TM-5CSx System on Modules (SOMs). Companies using these SOMs are realizing a competitive advantage through significant reduction of the time and cost involved in bringing new electronic products to market.

Saab Sensis Corporation, a world leader in surveillance and information technology for the aviation industry, recently partnered with Critical Link to develop the newest generation of their ground based ATM sensor. This state-of-the-art product receives the signals transmitted by aircraft for the purpose of locating them in space. Saab Sensis used MitySOM-5CSx to jumpstart and accelerate development.

“We’d developed our own boards before,” said Chris Schierer, Saab Sensis Senior Staff Systems Engineer and Lead Engineer for the ground based ATM sensor. “It wasn’t a question of capability. It was a question of where we wanted to focus our resources. When it came down to it, we wanted our engineers to focus on developing our own industry-specific intellectual property – the things that would make us more profitable and competitive.”

Saab Sensis was first attracted to the 5CSx module because it incorporates Altera’s Cyclone V SX processor. Engineers were excited to discover the Critical Link module offered an embedded ARM processor in an Altera FPGA, all in the module that offers the RAM, interfaces, and other features as well as the support they desired. The Cyclone® V System-on-a-Chip (SoC) is a powerful, fully programmable hardware and software building block that significantly improves system performance via the high-bandwidth between the single or dual ARM® Cortex™-A9 processor and the Cyclone® V FPGA fabric.

Chris Gourrier, Marketing Manager at Altera Corporation adds, “Using an SoC SOM such as the MitySOM-5CSx affords the designer access to this powerful FPGA SoC architecture, including productivity-enhancing features such as Altera’s exclusive FPGA-adaptive SoC debugging, while providing the opportunity for shorter time to market, lower development costs, reduced risks, and expert support from an experienced Altera design partner, Critical Link.”

Each part in the MitySOM-5CSx family is pin-for-pin compatible, allowing development teams the flexibility to quickly and cost-effectively meet customers’ unique requirements. The products are highly configurable, offering a wide range of technical features in a small form factor. Critical Link designed the SOM family with rigorous industrial, medical, and defense applications in mind, targeting long-term production with 10-15-year availability from initial release.

As with many Critical Link customers, the key reason Saab Sensis sought out a SOM was to make development of the ground based ATM sensor smoother and faster. MitySOM-5CSx exceeded expectations. “When our custom boards arrived, we were able to plug in the SOM, put our code in, and we were up and running in 24 hours,” recalled Schierer. “That is miraculous. There were people walking around the building with their jaws hanging down, saying, ‘I can’t believe we’re up and running on the first day.’” The MitySOM-5CSx family offers a wide range of processing densities, speed grades, and temperature options at competitive costs. Standard variants and development kits are available today from numerous major distributors. If a standard variant does not meet your specification, contact Critical Link to discuss developing a custom solution.

For complete details on the MitySOM-5CSx family, visit https://www.criticallink.com/product/mitysom-5csx/.

>>Read the full Saab Sensis case study: https://www.criticallink.com/customers/success-stories/.

About Critical Link

Syracuse, N.Y.-based Critical Link (www.criticallink.com) is an embedded systems engineering firm, offering a broad range of highly customizable, small form factor SOMs and development kits for highly integrated, embedded systems for medical, scientific, and industrial applications. Critical Link’s end-to-end product engineering offerings include design, development, and production services. Critical Link is a member of the Altera Design Services Network and a certified member of the Arrow Consulting Engineering Services (ACES) network. Critical Link is ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 14001 Registered by SRI Quality System Registrar.