With economic conditions shrinking development budgets, system designers are turning to reconfigurable technology to minimize custom hardware and ease future product updates. FPGA-based products allow designers to create multiple system configurations plus future updates without hardware changes. For example, Curtiss-Wright Controls Embedded Computing recently announced a new I/O mezzanine card that combines a user-programmable FPGA and configurable I/O in a PMC/XMC form factor suitable for applications such as imaging, system control for radar, software defined radio, and signal intelligence platforms. The XMC-FPGA05D includes an on-board Virtex-5 FPGA to control the I/O interface and deliver up to 138 signals such as ADC, DAC, Camera Link, RS485, and LVDS from its front panel, and up to 64 signals from the backplane via the host card. The module combines reconfigurable FPGA processing with high-speed data paths to simplify the integration of I/O into embedded subsystems. The XMC-FPGA05D routes two x8 Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA RocketIO high speed serial ports to the XMC P15 and P16 connectors enabling the card to be used with a variety of protocols and connectivity types. The card supports an x8/x4 PCI Express (PCIe) channel through its primary XMC P15 connector using the Virtex-5 FPGA’s built-in PCIe end-point block. The XMC P15 and P16 connectors can also be used to provide user-defined protocol support over the data links.

Software support for the XMC-FPGA05D includes software drivers for Wind River VxWorks, Linux and Microsoft Windows operating environments. In addition, Curtiss-Wright’s FusionXF development kit includes a C programming language API, driver framework, and a framework for adding in new IP functionality or capabilities to the FPGA. Pricing for the XMC-FPGA05D starts at $7,250.