FPGA Gurus

Xilinx Inc. announced Jan. 28 the formation of an alliance (the company uses the word “ecosystem,” which has been banned from my personal lexicon) to address design opportunities in aviation applications. While the release pinpoints avionics applications, the standards mentioned are relevant to commercial aviation – namely, RTCA/DO-254 for Federal Aviation Agency standards, and EUROCAE/ED-80 from the European Aviation Safety Agency.

Xilinx will work with partners such as Mentor Graphics Corp., Aldec Inc., LynuxWorks Inc., and Patmos Engineering Services Inc. to offer an integrated development environment for avionics subsystems incorporating Virtex and Spartan FPGAs. Xilinx is offering a white paper on the commercial aviation standards, downloadable here.

We can anticipate similar efforts in military realms, especially with COTS components playing a bigger role. Traditionally, military standards have specified device-level requirements, such as the 883B standard. But federal organizations are moving to board-level design-conformance standards similar to what the FAA and EASA have done with the standards referenced above. Already, the FPGA Mission Assurance Center at Kirtland Air Force Base, sponsored by Air Force Research Laboratory with participation from Sandia National Labs, is trying to develop conformance methods for military and aerospace designs using advanced FPGAs.  What Xilinx has assembled in commercial aviation may soon be duplicated in a variety of mil-aero domains.