About Flexibilis

Flexibilis stands for precision, reliability and security. Flexibilis products lay the foundation for the implementation of high-availability seamless redundancy in a wide range of industrial applications, most notably in the energy industry. The Flexibilis brand has been a part of TTTech’s industrial market offering since 2016.

Flexibilis products include FPGA IP cores, integrated semiconductor devices as well as related software and development kits. Flexibilis products are developed in Tampere, Finland and are available from TTTech sales offices around the world.

Background

Flexibilis Oy was founded in 1998 in Tampere, Finland. In communication technology, Flexibilis concentrated on wired Ethernet. In 2002, Flexibilis had already developed its first FPGA IP product. The product was named FFEC (Flexibilis Fast Ethernet Controller), and was an Ethernet controller IP block, programmable to an FPGA chip. In 2006, development of FPGA technology made it possible to upgrade the controller to gigabit speed. The name was changed to AFEC (Advanced Flexibilis Ethernet Controller), as “Fast Ethernet” implied support for 100 Mbps speed only. The IEEE 1588 PTP (Precision Time Protocol) was becoming a more and more widely used standard for time synchronization, and support for it was added to AFEC in 2007.

The development of another important Flexibilis IP product, FES (Flexibilis Ethernet Switch) started in 2007. FES is a standards compliant Ethernet switch. It was designed from the start to be gigabit, and to support the IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol. In July 2011 Flexibilis released a version of FES that supported the HSR (High-availability Seamless Redundancy) protocol. At first the product was called FES-HSR, to emphasize its origin. The product garnered wide interest, as it was the first HSR implementation to support gigabit speed. Support for PRP (Parallel Redundancy Protocol) was added and the name was changed to FRS (Flexibilis Redundant Switch).

Flexibilis has also designed complete devices. In 2007-2009 Flexibilis developed its first complete communication product. It was a time synchronization device targeted for use in harsh environments. It had a waterproof housing, and the electronics inside the housing were passively cooled. It was built using FPGA technology and both AFEC and FES IP blocks were employed. The device was able to achieve nanosecond class accuracy in clock transfer over Ethernet using IEEE 1588 PTP.

In October 2016, TTTech acquired Flexibilis and integrated the Flexibilis brand and products into its industrial market offering. TTTech Computertechnik AG is an Austrian company and a global leader in the field of robust networking and safety controls.

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