The modular approach taken by Enclustra in its FPGA and SoC modules demonstrated its advantages two-fold in a customer project – firstly, through an extremely short development time, and secondly, through the development of an application-specific base board that can also be used by the customer in future projects.

The base board for a Mercury+ XU8 module features the standard ports, such as 2x Gigabit Ethernet, 2x USB 3.0 and 1 x 10 Gigabit Ethernet, as well as the option of connecting four SSDs (2x SATA, 2x PCIe NVMe). In parallel to this, Enclustra has developed an additional card that can be plugged into the base board, featuring two space-rated Texas Instruments multi-gigabit transceivers, as well as SFP+ and LVDS I/Os. Although the additional card is a project-specific development, the base board will also be used in other customer projects.

In the next phase, Enclustra will develop the FPGA firmware and the embedded software, which will likewise be modularly divided into general infrastructure and application-specific functionality.