Product category:
Design and Development Software
News Release from: Celoxica | Subject: DK Design Suite
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 07 July 2005
FPGA design is right on time
Celoxica has successfully completed critical design work for the Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space (ACES) programme.
Celoxica has successfully completed critical design work for the Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space (ACES) programme Working to stringent deadlines and design criteria, scientists and engineers at Kayser Threde and Steinbeis Transferzentrum Raumfahrt (Transfer Centre Spaceflight, TZR) used Celoxica's DK Design Suite and C-based hardware design methodology to implement in FPGA a state-of-the-art frequency control and distribution package (FCDP) to connect next generation atomic clocks
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 5 Mar 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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Kayser Threde built a qualification model as part of the FCDP verification process using special radiation hardened FPGA devices mounted onto a board.
The code generated from the DK Design Suite was directly synthesised to the board and the system proved itself to be first-time correct.
"ACES's severe restrictions on power consumption and weight moved us away from microprocessor-only technology", said Felix Huber, Scientific Director at TZR.
Further reading
Design suite supports latest platform FPGAs
Celoxica is supporting the 90nm Spartan-3 series of FPGAs from Xilinx with its DK Design Suite, providing designers with a C-based language design environment for platform FPGAs.
Workshops to give practical insight into design
Celoxica will demonstrate the latest version of its DK Design Suite of system design tools and IP for high density FPGA and programmable SoC design at Programmable World 2003 technical workshops.
"Using the DK tool we were able to balance automation at the C-level of design abstraction with complete designer control over critical areas of the design".
"In days, not weeks, we took software algorithms and descriptions and turned them into very efficient hardware designs that were high performance but also low in power".
"The productivity gain was enormous".
Sponsored by the European Space Agency (ESA) the ACES programme tests the performance of a new type of atomic clock that exploits and depends on microgravity conditions.
Approved to fly on the International Space Station, the programme supports fundamental physics experimentation, new experiments testing general relativity within the solar system and will provide an ultra-high-performance global timescale.
The global timescale supports much wider applications that depend on the absolute accuracy of atomic clocks.
Telecommunication networks rely on atomic clocks to ensure that time stamped voice, data and VoIP packets are re-assembled in the correct order.
Atomic clocks glue together the world's financial markets through accurate time stamping of electronic transactions.
Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) are heavily dependent on atomic clocks to provide accurate positioning information.
Commenting on the project Phil Bishop President and CEO of Celoxica said: "This project clearly demonstrates the very advanced features and predictable quality of results that make our C-synthesis technology the worlds most proven and widely used".
"Enormous demands were placed on the design and every criteria was met".
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