An instrument can collect more data than its processor can use in time. Intel and Altera announced on November 10 that they will develop a reference design for equipment makers facing that problem. Their proposed sensor bridge pairs Altera programmable chips with Intel processing hardware and software to carry readings into the memory of the host computer.
One case the companies identify is a machine with sensors physically separated from the main computing board. Equipment designers must accommodate the electrical interfaces at one end and move the combined streams across that distance. Altera’s field-programmable gate arrays give designers hardware they can reconfigure as the choice of sensors changes. Intel would supply the host environment that consumes the resulting streams.
Healthcare equipment is an early focus because a measurement can lose its usefulness if it arrives late. The companies also identify robotics and aerospace equipment as potential markets. They intend to make their work available through developer kits from both companies. The announcement leaves the release date, supported interfaces and measured end-to-end delay open.
Where timing enters the design
Consider two cameras observing a moving object from different angles. A processor may have ample capacity to interpret each image. If one stream sits in a queue while the other flows freely, the two views can describe different positions. For a prospective equipment maker, the significant test of a common bridge will be how closely the readings stay aligned when several instruments transmit at once. That measurement would speak more directly to machine behavior than the peak speed of a single connection.