Xilinx adds FPGA-DSP-development kits
Mike Demler, Technical Editor -- EDN, January 6, 2011
Through collaboration with Avnet
Electronics Marketing, The MathWorks, Texas
Instruments, and 4DSP, Xilinx has announced DSP-development
kits for high performance, low cost, and acceleration of system performance
through coprocessing.
Xilinx based the Virtex-6 FPGA DSP-development kit on
the LX240T FPGA. It targets high-performance signal-processing applications, such
as aerospace and defense, medical technology, high-performance computing, and
next-generation wireless communications. An FPGA mezzanine card connects the Virtex-6
ML605 development board to a pair of Texas Instruments ADCs and DACs. The
dual-channel, 14-bit ADCs operate at 250M samples/sec, and a dual-channel DAC
provides 16-bit resolution at 800M samples.sec. Design-environment support
includes the Xilinx ISE (integrated-software-environment) design suite for The MathWorks
Matlab Simulink with SysGen, and the AutoESL (electronic-system-level) HLS (high-level-synthesis)
tools.The Spartan-6 FPGA DSP-development kit is an entry level platform that provides 6.7-times more performance per watt than does a discrete DSP and targets designs requiring minimum cost and low system power. The kit's baseboard includes a Spartan-6 LX150T FPGA with integrated transceivers for high-speed system connectivity. All of the new development kits support the AMBA (advanced microcontroller-bus-architecture) AXI4 (Advanced Extensible Interface 4). They include digital upconversion/downconversion reference designs that you can use as is. Alternatively, you can modify them through an RTL (register-transfer-level) design flow, model-based design with Matlab and Simulink, or high-level C-language synthesis.
For software engineers, the Spartan-6 FPGA-coprocessing DSP kit enables you to reduce application bottlenecks by using the FPGA to offload high-performance DSP functions to achieve system acceleration. The Avnet development kit integrates the Spartan-6 LX45T FPGA with Texas Instruments low-power OMAP (Open Multimedia Applications Platform) L-138 processor that employs the ARM926EJ-S and TI's C674x DSP core. To help engineers start designing immediately, the kit includes Texas Instruments' Code Composer Studio. The kit also supports embedded-Linux development, along with the SysGen flow for model-based design and RTL flows with reusable and extensible code.
The Virtex-6 FPGA DSP kit, which includes the ML605 development board, Xilinx ISE System Edition, AXI4 DSP IP (intellectual property), Virtex-6 FPGA targeted reference design, and Texas Instruments ADC/DAC technology on an FPGA-mezzanine daughtercard from 4DSP, sells for $3995. The Spartan-6 FPGA-DSP kit includes the Avnet Electronics Marketing LX150T development board, Xilinx ISE System Edition, AXI4 DSP IP, and a Spartan-6 FPGA-targeted reference design and sells for $1995. The Spartan-6 FPGA coprocessing kit is available for $1695.
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