Anvil Snapshot Data Recorder

Anvil is an “All-Digital” front-end solution to data recording. Based on solid state SDRAM memory and a completely embedded hardware architecture, Anvil has been designed to optimally address the most critical stage of real time data recording: effective capture of sensor streams, ensuring there is no loss of valuable signal data.

Anvil’s embedded hardware architecture and large capacity of high throughput, dual access SDRAM memory nodes are optimally designed to capture sensor data, rate buffer and then transfer it to secondary hard disk drive media. With its four full length, full height PCI slots, Anvil can accommodate a variety of sensor input I/O (A/D, Serial FPDP, fiber links) and storage output I/O (fibre channel, SCSI, SATA) to record data on traditional hard disk drive arrays in the form of RAIDs or JBODs (Just a Bunch of Disks). Data can then be accessed by management workstation consoles for playback analysis, or server farms for off-line processing. Alternatively, depending on the application’s bandwidth and storage requirements, workstations and servers can also access data directly from Anvil without relying on any intermediary hard disk drive storage resources.

Applications: Acquisition of real time sensor data for recording or signal analysis.

• Intelligence and Surveillance: Radar, Signal Intelligence, Electro Optical /Infrared, Software Defined Radio
• Semiconductor Manufacturing and Test Equipment
• Medical Diagnostic and Test Equipment
• Energy and Fuel exploration, Seismic Analysis, Telemetry, Real Time Simulators and various Digital Instrumentation
• Video and Streaming Media Editing Facilities

Snapshot Recording Capabilities
Anvil is the industry’s first storage subsystem capable of properly addressing the technical challenges of “snapshot” data recording. In such applications, valuable sensor data can burst at very high rates that exceed the sustained write transfer capabilities of traditional storage media such as hard disk drives, flash memory, or tape. To effectively capture signal data utilizing one of these traditional storage medias, sensors must often be down throttled to reduced performance modes or data must be filtered at a higher degree of resolution than otherwise desired due to the inherent bandwidth limitations of the storage media.

Unlike other data recorders that are principally based on hard disk drive (HDD), flash, or tape technology, Anvil utilizes SDRAM memory not just for maximum performance, but for the most consistent, predictable performance. Providing thirty-two sockets for industry standard SODIMM modules, Anvil can provide up to 64GB of solid state, SDRAM memory. Each of the two memory arrays within Anvil can sustain data transfer rates of over 500 MB/s. These independent memory nodes also support multiple concurrent DMA operations, so data can in effect be written into a single memory node while simultaneously being read out of that same memory node.