Our Product Portfolio
RPA products cover two main markets, distributed I/O and video processing. Our feature-rich products are designed to enable our customers to meet their challenging market requirements by reducing time to market . RPA began accumulate expertise in the development of signal processing hardware when a past OEM contracted RPA to design a family of SHARC DSP modules. RPA continues to develop visual hardware based on years of experience in military flight simulation.
I/O Products
Back in 1998, RPA developed the 1st generation FPGA based FIO (Flexible I/O) board line. The FIO boards contain a PCI bridge, FIFO and FPGA. Using a language such as VHDL to program the FPGA allows our customers to easily add pre and post processing algorithms to their I/O systems. We still continue to offer the FIO series 11 years later.
Over the past few years, RPA has developed the 2nd generation FIO cards with the first being the Ethernet FIO. As the name implies, 10/100 Ethernet is the data link to an onboard Blackfin DSP and FPGA (Cyclone or Stratix) combination. True to its FIO roots, the card supports daughterboard designs using connections from the FPGA and DSP for easy custom daughterboard integration. Using RPA design blocks, we can support USB 2.0 and many other legacy serial data links. The Blackfin DSP offers flexibility to our customers and can be suitable in applications where a FPGA-based solution is not. One benefit of the Blackfin DSP module is that it can run an embedded OS such as uClinux. With the advent of the Ethernet FIO now any module stack becomes Internet/Network capable. RPA has valuable experience with many different types of I/O ranging from high power DC I/O up to high speed LVDS / high resolution video data streams. Ask RPA how we can leverage our expertise to help you with your daughterboard design.
Our I/O products have been used in such markets as:
- RADAR Signal Processing
- SONAR Signal Processing
- ASIC Testing Platforms
- Industrial and Scientific Video Camera Interfaces
- Sensor Simulation (IR, RADAR, SONAR)
- Video Camera Systems (Visual and Infrared)
- Acoustic Signal Processing / Recording
- General Purpose DSP
Video Products
In the video processing market, RPA concentrates on building low latency video products. Designs are built around hardware platforms that require little to no software intervention. RPA developed the now famous Genlock card used by many in the flight simulation world. The newest card is our FWE (Fusion Warping and Extrapolation) which is a dedicated real-time image processing engine designed to perform low-latency algorithm execution on high-resolution video. Currently IR&D and SBIR work centers around our Auto-Alignment system. A self-contained, precision and adaptable measurement system for quick alignment of complex display systems.
Our video products have been used in such markets as:
- Visual simulation and image processing systems
- On-the-fly video compression / decompression
- Sensor post-processing
- Auto-alignment system
- FWE
- Warping
- Color correction
- Blending regions
- Extrapolation
- Video Genlock
- Image fusion
We are committed to supporting our customers throughout the design cycle. We strive at all times to be accessible and available to help our customers with whatever design or support issue they may encounter. RPA can work at any level of support our customers require. RPA can support the customer from initial product specifications through detail design and up to final system integration
Logistics and Manufacturing
RPA can support our customers from concept through design to full turnkey production of their products. Each customer has a different level of comfort once product design is completed and the product heads to production. Some customers are more comfortable retaining full control of their production while others would rather have an experienced OEM such as RPA manage production-related issues. RPA also provides a number of obsolescence programs for our customers thereby ensuring a steady supply of product into the future.
