Archives for category ‘News’

Join Flexibilis Team for Fixed-Term Projects

We are searching for a Junior Embedded Designer, Senior Embedded Designers and a Test Engineer to join our development team in Tampere office. With us, you can work on challenging projects in an international environment. The work is fixed-term and Flexibilis is hiring the labour from Manpower. You can find more information about the positions behind these links:

Junior Embedded Designer
Senior Embedded Designers
Test Engineer

If you are interested, please apply through the links provided. Positions will be filled when suitable candidates are found.

Implement HSR/PRP with a Single Chip: SpeedChips XRS7000 Family



Flexibilis’ brand new product family is first of its kind in the world: An integrated circuit with which you can add HSR/PRP functionality to your device. This new chip series is called XRS7000 and is part of Arrow Electronics’ SpeedChips product family.

HSR and PRP are standardized redundancy protocols (IEC 62439-3 Clause 5 & 4) for wired Ethernet and provide zero-loss redundancy with no single point of failure. The aim of redundancy is to make fail-safe systems and HSR is currently the most efficient redundancy protocol available for Ethernet.

There are two different chips available which both have HSR and PRP support: XRS7003 (three ports) and XRS7004 (four ports). The chips also include IEEE 1588v2 Precision Time Protocol (PTP) transparent clock functionality. They can be used for example in industrial automation, motion control, substation automation, vehicle communication and networking equipment.

Features:

  • Compatible with High-availability Seamless Redundancy (HSR)
  • Compatible with Parallel Redundancy Protocol (PRP)
  • Two (XRS7003) or three (XRS7004) 10/100/1000 Mbit/s RGMII ports
  • Time and frequency synchronization using IEEE1588-2008 Precision Time Protocol v2
  • I2C and MDIO for register access
  • Cut-through and store-and-forward operation
  • Quality of Services (QoS) with priority tagging, packet filtering and four priority queues per port
  • Port-based VLAN and VLAN tagging
  • PPS (Pulse per Second) input and output
  • Support for MAC address based authenticating methods
  • RMON statistics counters
  • Two industrial range packages available: 144-Pin Plastic Enhanced Quad Flat Pack (EQFP) and 256-Pin Fine Line Ball Grid Array (FBGA)

Links:

 

TTTech Acquires Chip IP Specialist Flexibilis to Strengthen Position in Industrial Domain and to Expand Towards Smart Grid Market

Vienna, Austria – October 11, 2016
TTTech, a global leader in the field of robust networking and safety controls, announced today that it has completed the acquisition of Finnish chip IP specialist Flexibilis. The deal further strengthens TTTech’s comprehensive offering in reliable real-time communication solutions for its industrial customers. It will also enable TTTech to accelerate growth in new application areas such as smart grids as well as deterministic edge or real-time fog computing.

Flexibilis has over 15 years’ of experience developing precise, reliable and secure IP cores designed for easy FPGA integration. In the past few years Flexibilis IP has already been chosen by leading energy infrastructure providers at the core of their high-availability networks in smart grid systems. The acquisition integrates Flexibilis’ extensive development expertise with that of TTTech, resulting in outstanding Deterministic Ethernet IP solutions that will also include the IEEE TSN (Time-Sensitive Networking) standards. These IP solutions will provide capabilities for optimum integration into FPGA-based devices with a small footprint, for industrial automation vendors as well as smart grid suppliers.

“The acquisition of Flexibilis is an important step for us”, states Georg Kopetz, Member of the Executive Board and Co-Founder of TTTech. “It demonstrates our strategic intent to deliver products in the industrial and smart grid markets that offer state-of-the-art solutions to the challenges faced by our customers today and in the future. We are thrilled to have such a talented team joining our TTTech group.”

Flexibilis is already a technology leader in the smart grid market today. Its Redundant Switch (HSR/PRP) products, which deliver seamless redundancy for high-availability in power generation and sub-station systems, will remain available under the Flexibilis brand. This product line will continue to be fully supported and extended going forward. In all other markets the Flexibilis offering will be integrated with the TTTech offering.

“I believe that Flexibilis and TTTech are a perfect fit,” explains CEO Heikki Ala-Juusela, who was elected to serve as managing director of the new TTTech Flexibilis Oy entity in Finland. “Our state-of-the-art products and our experienced employees will support TTTech’s efforts in the industrial area and accelerate growth.”

TTTech is committed to investing in the Flexibilis development center in Tampere, Finland, in order to ensure that the highly skilled team there can continue to develop innovative technology solutions and grow in line with the strong customer demand.

About TTTech Computertechnik AG

TTTech is a global leader in the field of robust networking and safety controls. TTTech solutions improve the safety and reliability of electronic systems in the industrial and transportation sectors, with a portfolio of products that are helping to make the Industrial Internet of Things and autonomous driving a reality.

Thanks to the proven platform-based architecture, TTTech solutions enable simple system integration with shorter time-to-market and significant cost reductions for customers. TTTech solutions support highly scalable and modular open real-time architectures based on Deterministic Ethernet, including the upcoming IEEE TSN and the established SAE Time-Triggered Ethernet standard.

More information about TTTech is available at www.tttech.com

Press contact
Marco Lehner
Marketing Communications
TTTech Computertechnik AG
Schoenbrunner Strasse 7
1040 Vienna, Austria
Tel: +43 1 585 34 34-473
Fax: +43 1 585 34 34-90
Email:

FES 3.0 Combines FES, FRS and FDS into a Single IP Core

The new version of FES, FRS and FDS combines these three Flexibilis Ethernet IP Cores together into one core, called FES 3.0. FES 3.0 introduces the possibility to license selectable features.

The additional and licensable features include:

  • HSR
  • PRP
  • Static MAC table
  • Traffic Policing
  • Traffic Shaping
  • MACsec

Without any optional features FES 3.0 is a basic Ethernet switch core. The design variation of FES 3.0 that combines redundant networking features is called Flexibilis Redundant Switch (FRS), and the variation with Time-sensitive networking (TSN) features is called Flexibilis Deterministic Switch (FDS).

Compared to previous versions, new features include MACsec, new generics and improved HSR Mode X support. More detailed description of FES 3.0 can be found in its manual: FES Manual

FES 3.0 has several changes compared to the previous versions FRS 2.9.4 and FES. Please contact us if you need help in migrating from FRS 2.9.4 / FES to FES 3.0.

Best in Class Industrial Ethernet: Flexibilis and ABB Distribution Automation Protection Relays

The modern Protection Relay has high communication demands, the Protection Relays being often connected to one another in ring or star topologies. The Relays exchange high amounts of data at extreme latency requirements: Relays can communicate with one another exchanging measurement results according to the IEC 61850 9-2 Protocol, and the results need to be correlated in time. The Relay connections need to be reliable and redundant, HSR (High-availability Seamless Redundancy) and PRP (Parallel Redundancy Protocol) are in use.

In implementing the communication solutions, ABB collaborates with Flexibilis. The co-operation is already of long standing, lasting more than a decade. A key component of the solution is the Flexibilis FRS IP block.

The co-operation has been very fruitful, and the results are available for everyone in the highly efficient and reliable communication implemented within the ABB Relion Series Relays. Both ABB and Flexibilis are highly satisfied with the mutual work done, and expect the co-operation to continue several years into the future.

abb_logo

HSR Standard Ed. 3 Introduces Mode X

Edition 3 of IEC 62439-3 has been approved on January 8th, 2016. IEC 62439-3 is the standard for High-availability Seamless Redundancy (HSR) and Parallel Redundancy Protocol (PRP).

Flexibilis Redundant Switch (FRS) supports the new edition, including the HSR Mode X it introduces. In HSR Mode X, nodes discard the duplicates in opposite direction. This reduces the amount of network load caused by the multicasts to about half and frees resources for other uses.

Devices in HSR Ring

FRS 2.9.3 Supports Quartus 15.0

New version 2.9.3 of Flexibilis Redundant Switch (FRS) has been released. Updates have been made to the FRS reference designs as well as the FRS IP, including some bug fixes. Now FRS supports Quartus II design software version 15.0. More information about the software can be found on Altera webpage.

New versions of FRS are available on the downloads page: https://www.flexibilis.com/products/downloads/

Evaluate FRS with Terasic SoCKit

Flexibilis Redundant Switch (FRS) can now be evaluated with Terasic SoCKit. The SoCKit includes Altera Cyclone V SoC FPGA with a Dual-Core ARM Cortex-A9.

Instructions how to set up the evaluation are available on the downloads page, or you can just see the document here: FRS Evaluation Setup Guide, Terasic SoC. The SoC reference design needed for the evaluation is also available on the downloads page.

You can find more information about Terasic SoCKit on their webpage: http://sockit.terasic.com/

FRS SoC Demo

FRS Optimized in New Version 2.9.1

New version of Flexibilis Redundant Switch (FRS) is now available, and can be downloaded from here: https://www.flexibilis.com/products/downloads/. In version 2.9.1 of the IP core, memory and logic usage have been optimized and issues fixed. Also version 2.9.2 is already out, it adjusts management trailer handling for QuadBox.

The reference design version 2.9.1 changes the design to match the newest IP core version. Also supervision stack has been updated.

FRS Now Has Cut-through

New version of Flexibilis Redundant Switch (FRS) has been released this week. The most significant improvement is that the switch now has cut-through functionality, in addition to store-and-forward. You can freely choose between these two, whichever suits your system better.

Cut-through is a packet forwarding method in which the switch starts to forward the packet before it is fully received. This lowers latency in a non-congested network. With store-and-forward the packet is fully received before it is forwarded, and it is more reliable especially if there are high error rates.

You can download both reference design and IP core version 2.9 from here: https://www.flexibilis.com/products/downloads/