Xilinx Expands DSP Portfolio with New Spartan-6 FPGA and Virtex-6 FPGA DSP Development Kits

Through the collaboration of Avnet Electronics Marketing, MathWorks, TI, 4DSP, and Xilinx
Launch of a new kit that perfectly meets low-cost, high-performance DSP requirements

Xilinx Korea (Country Manager Heung-sik Ahn) December 7, 2010 – Xilinx has announced three new, performance-enhanced development kits to enable digital signal processing developers to easily adopt FPGAs, thereby enabling the highest level of signal processing performance, optimization for cost and power, and alleviation of system bottlenecks through coprocessing. Because Xilinx’s target design platforms are created in collaboration with industry-leading distributors, design service, tool, and hardware partners, the newly added Xilinx DSP portfolio provides developers with hardware, tools, and reference designs to ensure a productive design flow across various DSP applications.

Tim Erjavec, Senior Director of Platform Solution Service Marketing at Xilinx, said, “Because market demands for DSP requirements and design methods vary, we have partnered with industry leaders Texas Instruments, Avnet Electronics Marketing, MathWorks, and 4DSP to provide a complete development platform that enables design techniques suited to developers’ workflows.” He added, “Through collaboration in video, medical imaging, wireless, aerospace, defense, and other fields, we plan to launch kits that provide an ideal balance of FPGA, processor, and DSP resources for various DSP applications.”

Because the Xilinx target design platform for DSPs is scalable, new performance, standards, features, and support can be easily added. Xilinx, customers, partners, and third parties can easily realize enhanced capabilities on existing platforms, increasing value for end users and shortening development and investment schedules. The DSP-targeted design platform addresses application requirements across the entire performance range, including preparation for maximum performance, cost-optimized performance, and coprocessing acceleration.

The new DSP development kits include the new high-performance Virtex®-6 FPGA DSP kit with integrated ADC/DAC capabilities, the enhanced low-cost Spartan®-6 FPGA DSP kit, and the Spartan-6 FPGA coprocessing DSP kit. All three kits include integrated support for AMBA®4 AXI™4 interconnects and IP.

Virtex-6 FPGA DSP Development Kit with Integrated High-Speed Data Converter
The new Virtex-6 FPGA DSP development kit targets applications requiring peak signal processing performance and supports Texas Instruments' Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs) and Digital-to-Analog Converters (DACs) on an FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC) designed by 4DSP. This allows customers to tune performance in both analog and digital domains. Since the kit includes target reference designs that allow for the complete configuration and control of ADCs/DACs on the Virtex-6 FPGA, users can optimize Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) loss points, quantization, analog filtering, and gain. The kit includes AXI4 support, enabling easy integration of high-performance point-to-point interconnects optimized to reduce resource usage without impacting performance, alongside Xilinx and third-party IP. Integrating ADC/DAC technology with the Virtex-6 device can shorten development time by weeks to months.

This DSP platform includes various applications such as aerospace, defense, medical technology, high-performance computing, and next-generation wireless communication.

Spartan-6 FPGA DSP Development Kit
For customers requiring performance optimization with optimal cost and power consumption when adding DSPs to existing systems, the new Spartan-6 FPGA DSP Development Kit is the ultimate entry-level platform, featuring added AXI4 support via the latest version of the Xilinx ISE Design Suite. The kit's baseboard includes the Spartan-6 LX150T device, which offers cost-optimized DSP performance, and an integrated high-speed system connectivity transceiver. In addition to various design tutorials, reference designs targeting digital up/down conversion are provided. These can be used as is, or development can be accelerated by modifying or extending them within familiar design environments, such as RTL (Model-based Design, MATLAB, and Simulink) or high-level “C” synthesis.

Spartan-6 FPGA Coprocessing DSP Kit
Xilinx and Avnet Electronics Marketing stated that software designers use Spartan-6 FPGAs