Samplify introduces high-speed FPGA-based data-compression technology

Samplify Systems Inc. in Santa Clara, Calif., is offering the Samplify compression engine for field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and Samplify for Windows signal-analysis tool to address the widening gap between ever-increasing digitization rates and the fixed-bandwidth infrastructure. Samplify’s FPGA-based compression is for real-time embedded military, homeland-security, medical-maging, ATE, test-and-measurement, and data-acquisition applications. The technology significantly reduces bandwidth and storage requirements in embedded systems, company officials say. The technology is for rates from 10 megasamples per second (MSPS) using PC software, 250 MSPS in FPGAs, and as many as 60 gigasamples per second in application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). The Samplify compression engine for FPGAs compresses and decompresses signals in real time from 2:1 to 8:1 compression with user-selected lossless, fixed-rate, and fixed-quality options. The compression engine for FPGAs is optimized for sampled data received from analog-to-digital and sent to digital-to-analog converters. Samplify’s FPGA compression engine is 10 to 1000 times faster than other microprocessor-based compression, company officials say. Samplify’s ER compression algorithms deliver equivalent results in the area between lossless and lossy compression for acceptable results at relatively low bit rates. The Samplify for Windows signal analysis tool, meanwhile, enables users to experiment with Samplify’s lossless and lossy compression modes. For more information contact Samplify online at www.samplify.com.