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Scottish firm Nallatech says FPGAs are the ideal method for avoiding obsolescence in hardware.
18 September 2002
The ability to alter both hardware and software without changing the basic boards is helping the firm sell products into applications such as defence.
“Hardware’s always changing and they normally have to fix that in software,” said Dr Malachy Devlin, Nallatech’s chief technology officer.
Nallatech creates development boards that integrate large amounts of programmable logic. Its latest PCI card, the BenNUEY, can integrate up to seven Xilinx Virtex-II FPGAs, giving up to 56 million gates of logic.
“A lot more people are beginning to understand FPGAs, courtesy of the likes of Xilinx and Altera,” Devlin said. He likens the programmable logic market to microprocessors in the 1970s - it has a lot of growth yet to come. “Reconfigurable computing is just starting out.”
The Cumbernauld-based firm has grown rapidly since its formation in 1993, and now has offices in Bristol and Florida. Bristol is a design and application engineering office, while Florida is sales and marketing, said Devlin. “We’ve moved from being a bunch of engineers doing what we like, to being a corporation,” said Devlin. “We’re going to continue growing. Despite the market, we still grew at 25 per cent last year.”
He claimed the privately-held firm is on target to match that growth in 2002. Exports account for more than 80 per cent of the firm’s sales.
Source: Richard Ball, Electronics Weekly
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