Why choosing the White Rabbit Solution?

Other solutions that bring precise timing and high synchronization already exist in the market, but most of them are limited or not standard. We believe that White Rabbit Solution is the best investment for a long term approach:

• The WR Switch and the SPEC use FPGAs, therefore their hardware can be easily reprogrammed to be up to date.
• As the WR Switch and the SPEC are designed following an “Open Hardware” strategy. The reference designs helps to better understand the technology and you are free to improve or redesign the boards.
• The WR protocol was conceived by CERN, one of the best scientific institutions in the domain of research, and it actively collaborates in the design of the OHWR products we manufacture. The implication of CERN consolidates the durability and the quality of the whole solution.
• All the elements in the White Rabbit Solution are designed to be as modular as possible in order to reduce the cost of maintenance and upgrade.
• It allows a hybrid network: the WR Switch can be used as a normal switch to connect directly your PC in order to be quickly linked in the network. If you do not need the specific features of WR protocol, you do not need to use a specific network card. You can also use only the PTP features of the WR switch if you only need millisecond accuracy.
• The WR protocol is open and enhances already existent protocols such as, Precision Time Protocol (IEEE1588) or Synchronous Ethernet (Sync-E). In the case you choose OHWR equipment, you are not stuck with the problems that can bring a proprietary solution (security updates, mislead APIs, poor documentation, closed system, …).

• There are also proprietary solutions as Seven Solutions ZEN & LEN with enhanced functionalities and easy to use for non developers allowing to achieve sub ns synchronization in an easy and transparent way.

Application example:

The White Rabbit solution can emulate a distributed instrumentation such as an oscilloscope:

• Common clock in the entire network: no skew between ADCs
• Ability to sample with different clocks via Distributed DDS
• External triggers can be time tagged with a TDC and used to reconstruct the original time base in the Operator’s PC.