Enabling project quick-start through platform development services

Objective

Portalis LC., a Utah-based firm, had a vision for a plug-and-play, driver free solution to allow the seamless integration of multiple display consoles into a unified workstation.  Control rooms typically contain multiple displays driven by multiple, proprietary systems, forcing operators to scatter their attention across a wide range of displays.  With Portalis' Workstation Integrator, network operations centers, command and control rooms, and similar facilities can now manage and monitor up to eight different computer systems on one integrated workstation. Operators can now focus their whole attention on their most critical and important tasks.

Portalis’ solution necessitated the ability to acquire, resample, and composite multiple highbandwidth video streams. Using an FPGA-based video processing was the company’s clear choice. In addition, the Workstation Integrator required a sophisticated control plane, including support for USB devices and a flexible user interface. These capabilities were best provided by a fully-featured, embedded operating system.

An Embedded Linux platform hosted on a Xilinx FPGA quickly emerged as the superior solution. The engineers quickly realized they also needed more than just a powerful tool flow, but also required a design services partner to create the core platform. This platform provided them a solid base on which to build the Workstation 

Integrator.

Solution

PetaLogix quickly emerged as the right group to become that partner. Their designers ported PetaLinux SDK to the target prototype board, integrated Portalis’ image processing IP, and built out the necessary platform support for USB and other required interfaces.

In addition, PetaLogix engineers performed the necessary drive development, the integration work, and delivered a ready-made, customised BSP for the Portalis controller that could be installed directly into the PetaLinux SDK.

They also included comprehensive example applications to showcase the programming interfaces to each of the major sub-systems.This combination of a plug and play BSP and reference applications allowed the Portalis team to quickly validate the deliverables and accelerate the development of a complex and highly sought-after technology. 

Results

Within 6 weeks of contract signature, PetaLogix delivered the complete BSP and reference application package to Portalis, along with PetaLinux SDK licenses to facilitate evaluation and acceptance testing.  The package was quickly verified and the Portalis team was ready to get to work on the upper levels of the system, knowing they had a solid foundation upon which to build.

"Our project was highly complex, under a tight time frame, and strategically critical to the completion of the technology. John, Wendy, and their team raised the bar on customer service, focussing on our issues and objectives so deliberately they became simply part of our team. They proceeded with vision, recommended solutions we hadn't even thought of, and completed their portion on time and on budget. The code they delivered has worked flawlessly on our boards. We are currently beginning the next phase of development with them. The Petalogix group is smart, fun to work with, and we hope to do business with their team for a long time."