Product category:
Design and Development Hardware
News Release from: Nu Horizons Electronics Corp | Subject: Spartan-3 development platforms
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 16 December 2004
Platforms speed FPGA development
Nu Horizons Electronics Corp has two new development platforms based on the Spartan-3 family of low cost FPGAs from Xilinx.
Nu Horizons Electronics Corp has two new development platforms based on the Spartan-3 family of low cost FPGAs from Xilinx Featuring the 2 million-gate XC3S2000 FPGA and 1.5 million-gate XC3S1500, each platform offers a complete customised design environment for a broad range of development applications including: Xilinx MicroBlaze soft processor, DSP and industrial systems, datacommunications, telecommunications and universal prototyping
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 7 Jul 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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To provide customers with immediate availability to this technology, Nu Horizons has partnered with online educational resource company TechOnLine to create a virtual lab environment - enabling free evaluation of the Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA via the Internet using Nu Horizons' XC3S2000 development platform.
"Our internal engineering staff has worked closely with Xilinx to build two low cost platforms that showcase Xilinx's leading edge FPGA products", explains Athar Zafar, Vice President of Global Engineering for Nu Horizons.
"By placing the XC3S2000 FPGA in an online evaluation and development environment, we're offering engineers early design access, as well as eliminating the exploratory costs typically involved with testing new technology".
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VirtuaLab, hosted by TechOnLine, allows designers to evaluate hardware and software tools via a web browser by providing information, training and resources to help make knowledgeable design and purchasing decisions.
The Nu Horizons VirtuaLab consists of several FPGA design scenarios.
Lab 1- inverse discrete cosine transform (IDCT) hardware acceleration - uses the MicroBlaze soft processor core and the fast simplex link (FSL) that demonstrates the advantages of using hardware functions to accelerate software.
The FSL interface allows the software application to "see" the hardware as a simple function call.
Using the FSL and custom hardware blocks can increase the performance of software running on the MicroBlaze soft processor core.
Lab 2 - PWM controller - uses the MicroBlaze soft processor with the OPB IPIF which provides a bidirectional interface between PWM controller core and the OPB 32bit bus standard.
The PWM controllers mark and space periods are controlled via a hyper terminal interface that reads and writes the control registers for each of the four channels.
The interface also uses the MIR register to provide a software reset to the PWM core.
Lab 3 - Flash programming via serial interface with boot loader - allows the engineer to program the onboard STMicroelectronics 2M x 16bit Flash in byte mode via the serial port interface.
The example converts a sample application into binary format, transfers the data via the Flash configuration interface GUI, and allows the user to execute the program from the STMicroelectronics Flash.
According to Jim Burnham, Strategic Marketing Manager in the Xilinx Embedded Processor Division: "The 2000 and 1500 development platforms from Nu Horizons offer engineers a strong design solution for building and evaluating embedded applications using MicroBlaze".
"The additional power of the FSL interface lets designers make hardware/software trade-offs".
"Moving an IDCT software function to hardware is an excellent example of increasing performance through hardware acceleration".
"It is very exciting that an engineer can get access to the latest development boards from Nu Horizons and try them out free on TechOnLine's VirtuaLab".
Each system platform has feature-rich functionality with 16Mbyte of SDRAM, 32Mbit Flash and a footprint for a 32Mbit SSRAM.
Also included is an external Ethernet controller with integrated PHY, as well as an external Ethernet PHY for evaluating the EMAC core from Xilinx allowing the end user to conserve FPGA gates.
The system board also holds STMicroelectronics L9616 CAN 2.0B physical layer device to create and evaluate CAN to Ethernet gateways, and Linear Technology's 16bit 250Ksample/s A/D convertor and complimentary 8us settling time D/A convertors for low to mid range DSP and GPP designs.
Additional Nu Horizons 1500/2000 development platform features include: Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA XC3S1500-4 FG676 and XC3S2000-4 FG676; ISSI 64Mbit SDRAM (IS42S16400); ST 32Mbit Flash (M29W320DB); ST high speed CAN 2.0B PHY interface (L9616); 4 x 20 character LCD interface; Sharp LCD panel connector I/F; SMSC 10/100 Ethernet MAC and PHY (LAN91C111); ICS 10/100 Ethernet PHY (ICS1893BF); Linear Technology two-channel 16bit A/D and D/A (LTC1654 D/A, LTC1865L A/D); ST audio codec (STW5093); PS2 port interface; two Intersil RS232 serial ports (ICL3237); 16bit LVDS I/F with control signals; parallel cable 3 and 4 JT configuration support; and ICS PLL system clock generator (ICS 511, ICS8422).
With the addition of plug-in evaluation modules from Linear Technology, engineers are able to use analogue to digital convertors with 10, 12 or 14bit resolution and sampling rates from 10 to 135Msample/s.
Plug-in evaluation modules from Intersil allow engineers to use digital to analogue convertors with 8, 10, 12 or 14bit resolution and throughput rates of 130 to 260MHz - for use in applications such as medical imaging, 3G-4G basestations and spectral analysis.
Nu Horizons Spartan-3 development platforms provide the lowest cost design tools presently available, and are enhanced with a multitude of bundling options and lead times ranging from four to six weeks.
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