There has been quite a bit of buzz lately about boards that use the Altera Stratix GX FPGA for their PCI interface. Specifically the fact that this part has some issues which effect performance and compatibility. BitFlow is happy to report that none of our boards use this family of parts (although we do use other Altera parts). This means there is no need to worry about any of these issues if you use BitFlow's frame grabbers. Click here for more information on the Altera web site.

BitFlow introduce the first PCI Express board ~3 years ago. Since then we have released four families of boards on the PCIe bus.

The PCIe interface on all our products is implemented with an off the shelf Intel bridge, the i41210. This bridge has a x8 PCIe interface. It is one of the most advanced PCIe interfaces with all the "bells and whistles". It implements all the stages of the PCIe, including the PHY. We felt that because of the logical and electrical complexity of the PCI-E protocol, especially the x8 mode, we would not take a chance with our own implementation in an FPGA. We opted to get the PCIe interface from Intel, one of the main authors of the PCI Express Specification. The i41210 is used extensively in the industry and by the military community. The use by the military will assure a long product life