Keeping it in the Family

Jul 8, 2006 12:00 PM

Xilinx Inc., a $1.7 billion Silicon Valley company, leads one of the fastest growing segments of the semiconductor industry — programmable logic devices (PLDs). The company is central to a story that demonstrates that the business world is very small indeed. When Xilinx discovered that their own PLDs were being designed into a new GE Security product that would help the electronics company upgrade their own security system, Xilinx chose to be a member of the beta testing team.

Updating a security system initially created to perform classic access control functions more than a decade ago, Xilinx and its integrator, San Jose, Calif.-based RFI Communications and Security Systems, are working together to ensure they continually meet the challenges resulting from the convergence of physical access control and IT requirements.

Securing such a large company is no easy task. At Xilinx's San Jose corporate headquarters, there are five buildings consisting of 550,000 square feet with approximately 1,600 direct employees and numerous contingency workers. The company's Colorado facility adds another two buildings with 340,000 square feet and approximately 350 employees. Dublin, Ireland, is the company's hub for European operations with 350,000 square feet and 350 employees to protect. There is another 50,000 square foot facility in New Mexico and remote sales and engineering offices in Toronto, Portland, Dallas, Austin, Nashua, Raleigh, Cork (Ireland), Edinburgh, Stockholm, Munich, Paris, Milan and Grenoble. The Asian headquarters are located in Singapore and Tokyo with offices planned for India and three other locations within the year.

Worldwide, all 3,000-plus employees wear an access control proximity badge.

System legacy started over a decade ago

In 1997, Xilinx had three campuses using three different security systems, with GE's UNIX-based Picture Perfect employed at the corporate headquarters. It was decided at that time to deploy the Picture Perfect platform on a global basis, because a UNIX-based architecture is more reliable, stable and less vulnerable to virus attacks than Windows-based systems. Likewise, the UNIX platform easily handles high volumes of transactions such as millions of card access transactions, complex data and real-time interactivity. The Picture Perfect platform was therefore deployed at all campuses to restrict access to inventory cages, test floors, hazardous storage and certain administrative areas.

Glass break detectors, electronic door sounders, request-to-exit devices and motion detectors were also integrated into the system, as well as environmental sensors in the data center. Emergency generators and electrical supply were also monitored.

Badge development is handled by GE's Visitor Central system with on-site printing at various locations using Fargo card printers. Smaller locations send a digital image to headquarters for printing. In any one year, Xilinx prints approximately 2,000 GE proximity badges, which are read by GE proximity card readers throughout all company locations.

Other brands employed in the system include Sony and Pelco fixed and dome cameras and Robot Intellex DVRs (now American Dynamics) — all integrated into the Picture Perfect platform. All systems are connected using fiber-optic cable.

At the monitoring center, two 42-inch NEC plasma monitors with camera control software from 360 Surveillance let officers view images and move from one plasma screen to the other effortlessly. The system is monitored at all times by personnel in the Security Operations located at Xilinx corporate headquarters. In the near future, all three major locations will be integrated as hubs into one master server. At that time, Xilinx will upgrade to GE's Picture Perfect v4.

Xilinx decides to trust its own products

GE recently adopted Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGAs and MicroBlaze soft processor core in its latest Picture Perfect technology, which offers an access control CPU with flash memory and supports direct communications over a TCP/IP network. The GE CPU, on which the chips are installed, serves as an improved interface between GE's Picture Perfect security management system and building access, surveillance and alarm systems as well as other monitoring solutions. At the heart of the system, Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGAs and MicroBlaze soft processor core act as the main processor on the board. Because of its FPGA-enabled flexible architecture, the platform can be upgraded with additional features to anticipate security needs of the future.

Xilinx, as an early adopter of GE's newest security platform, recently completed a seamless integration of the new equipment in its San Jose headquarters, thereby increasing its IT capabilities. As the nature of security itself is becoming more and more complex, Xilinx recognized it is imperative to be able to configure CPUs and enclosures in virtually limitless combinations to control card readers, keypads, alarm inputs and outputs. IT conformance is becoming mandatory, yet there needs to be a way to preserve legacy investments in earlier-generation security equipment at the same time the company is upgrading systems and applications for today's security environment.

The Xilinx IT department has been continually involved in the security of the corporation. For instance, it is much more efficient to use Ethernet than serial protocols; however, Ethernet is under the domain of the IT department. At the same time, they too, want additional capabilities in the security system but do not want wires running helter-skelter through the company. There is also the shadow of federal regulations.

As a public company, Xilinx falls under the watch of Sarbannes-Oxley. Since the new board already handles smart cards, Xilinx will be ready.

Xilinx is the only PLD supplier to offer a full range of devices that meet the stringent requirements of the automotive industry including ISO TS16949 certification, AEC-Q100 qualification flow, and PPAP documentation process and TSTL audits are undertaken once a year. The Picture Perfect has been very helpful with this process and will continue to play a vital role.

The Xilinx upgrade

By upgrading the system to the PXNplus, Xilinx obtained up to 10 times the processing capacity of their former CPUs. A Linux operating system and standard serial and 10/100 MB Ethernet provides new flexibilities, especially for the addition of new office locations. To garner such improved performance, Xilinx simply needed to unplug the old controllers and plug in the new PXNplus controllers. There was no impact on the rest of the security gear or the IT infrastructure.

The new boards were installed at corporate headquarters last November within just six hours. Since there are no screws or wiring, the plug-in feature made installation easy.

Once the upgrade was complete, the new system was up and running within minutes and was virtually transparent to Xilinx employees with minimal interruption. This was a great relief as Xilinx security staff had envisioned lines of people waiting to get into a secured area.

Each board controls up to 16 card readers, 80 alarm points and 64 relay outputs. Each supports up to seven downstream microcontrollers, with each group thus being able to control up to 64 card readers.

On a day-to-day basis, employees may not notice a difference, but those in the security department certainly do. Maintenance is done faster and more efficiently as a result of increased processing power. For instance, during maintenance, technicians can power down a panel, work on it and get back online instantly, ready to handle transactions. Previous boards took about an hour to get back online. Likewise, if there is a power failure, the panel is reset and instantly online.

Xilinx is using both serial and Ethernet communications, five of each. In this scenario, going with five serial-based boards saved about 30 percent. However, future installations will be Ethernet since there is no cost differential. The Tokyo high-rise office is a case in point. Its Asia/Pacific headquarters has 128 employees on two floors. Eight doors need to be controlled, but the two floors are ten floors apart. Ethernet is a natural solution.

Distributed intelligence, Linux operating system and other IT enablers

The Xilinx system also contains distributed intelligence, a feature that stores the database at the panel. If the server is taken off-line, the panel at the field level can handle any transactions based on the stored database. It can also handle triggers, such as locking down all doors upon an alert, a feature that is critical in card access applications. As anyone in the security industry knows, servers and networks do not stay up all the time.

By operating independently from the host system computer, system response is improved while 8MB of built-in Flash memory, working in conjunction with a dynamic IP address, supports remote firmware updates. Downloads are faster. Instead of going from workstation to workstation, upgrades can be done system-wide, from the server, thus reducing the time and cost of reconfiguring networks. After a communications failure, the controllers come up in approximately 90 seconds versus the four to five minutes in the previous system.

ABOUT THE COMPANIES

For information, circle the Reader Service number (listed below) or visit securitysolutions.com

American Dynamics	13
GE Security	14
NEC	15
Pelco	16
RFI Communications and Security Systems	17
Sony	18
360 Surveillance	19

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© 2008 Penton Media Inc.

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