FMC, from theory to practice

There’s a funny Laurie Anderson number where she describes an evangelist’s stage show and says, “He described in detail what would happen and then let it take place. It was almost like a prophecy.” I feel that way about FPGA vendors’ support for VITA 57.1, the FPGA Mezzanine Card or FMC. The standard was created, the major FPGA players said they loved it, and now we’re seeing first fruits in an FMC data-conversion card from Curtiss-Wright Embedded Controls.

Curtiss-Wright specifically gave a nod to the Xilinx Virtex-6 in a new family of FMC 8-bit A/D cards, the 3-Gsample/sec ADC512, and the 1.5-Gsample/sec ADC513. The cards do not contain the FPGAs, but enable low-latency access to Virtex-6 FPGAs in the host. As such, they’ll continue the growing trend we’re seeing to utilizing FPGAs in a greater percentage of VME and VPX designs, particularly in mil-aero applications. VITA completes the VITA 57 spec, the FPGA vendors sign on, and the COTS vendors produce cards using the direct FPGA interface. It was almost like a prophecy.