Embedded system fits in Compact Flash package

The E-12 EP is capable of accelerating many algorithms in hardware with the flexibility of software.

The Pico Computing EP card offers an extremely powerful embedded system in a Compact Flash package boasting a Xilinx Virtex-4 FX12 FPGA including a 450MHz PowerPC processor and 12,312 configurable logic cells.

The E-12 EP also comes equipped with Gigabit Ethernet, 64 megabyte Flash ROM, 128 megabyte PC133 RAM, and a 16-bit Compact Flash interface making this tiny machine capable of accelerating many algorithms in hardware with the flexibility of software.

The Pico E-12 PCMCIA cards provide massively parallel hardware computing resources in a low-power (less than 1W), self-contained Compact Flash package.

Impulse C and the Impulse CoDeveloper tools give software programmers access to this computing resource by allowing hardware accelerators to be compiled directly from C.

Impulse tools optimise the C code to exploit the FPGA's parallel processing capability, resulting in potentially large factors of acceleration.

The Impulse tools also generate the required software to hardware interfaces, allowing data to be moved efficiently between the FPGA and the optional on-board PowerPC processor, and between the E-12 card and a host PC.

Applications where this type of approach is showing promise include image processing, video processing, data encryption, bioinformatics, geophysics and other types of embedded and scientific computing.

The Pico E-12 is based on the latest-generation Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGA.

There are two versions of the Pico E-12: logic optimised (LO) and embedded processor (EP).

The logic optimised versions offer the most user-configurable logic, while the embedded processor version provides a reduced amount of FPGA logic but adds an embedded PowerPC processor.

In either case, the FPGA device is completely reconfigurable through the E-12's CompactFlash interface, with no external power or cabling required, either for programming or for normal operation.

"Pico extends the reach of the software engineer wanting to create Virtex-4 based accelerators for high performance software applications", said Larry Getman, Director, Embedded Marketing of Xilinx.

"By combining the CompactFlash interface, the Virtex-4 and Impulse C, Pico and Impulse are providing the performance benefits of FPGAs for the broader software engineering market".

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