Top-performance FPGAs put to the test

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Mar 16, 2007

Platform enables efficient design and evaluation of a wide range of high-speed applications based on the Xilinx Virtex-5 LX 330 family of top-performance FPGAs.

Tokyo Electron Device (TED) reckons it has developed the highest performance multiple-application evaluation platform for the Xilinx Virtex-5 LX 330 and its family, which today is the industry's highest density and highest performance FPGA in the market.

TED's new Virtex-5 LX Multi-Application Evaluation Platform enables efficient design and evaluation of a wide range of high-speed applications, including consumer products such as high definition televisions, set-top boxes and printers, as well as telecommunications equipment, medical devices and miscellaneous industrial equipment.

"As a leading Xilinx's distributor in Japan, TED is pleased to have again collaborated with Xilinx in developing this new Virtex-5 evaluation platform", said Toshiaki Sunagawa, President of TED.

"The Virtex-5 family is the flagship FPGA for Xilinx and a key new addition to our line of inrevium board products".

Built with TED's inrevium TE7725PF, a low-cost FPGA configuration control LSI, the Virtex-5 LX Multi-Application Evaluation Platform meets the rapidly growing market demand for a development environment that enables design engineers to rapidly evaluate high-speed interface technologies such as DDR2-SDRAM and LVDS.

The Virtex-5 LX platform also features: a Xilinx XC5VLX110 or 220 or 330-1FF1760 - the industry's first 65nm FPGA and Xilinx's flagship high density and performance FPGAs; onboard DDR2-SDRAM chips (667Mbit/s) and DDR2 SO-DIMM slot to evaluate high-speed memory access; a reference design for a high-speed DDR2-SDRAM memory interface; 10/100 Ethernet, RS232C and LVDS interface ports; expansion I/O ports for optional interface boards including DVI Tx/Rx, Camera Link, Optical Link and USB; and a high efficiency LTM4600 DC/DC micromodule from Linear Technology.

The TE7725PF is a second generation FPGA configuration controller from TED.

The TE7725PF enables the configuration of the Xilinx FPGA with a NOR Flash memory (up to 256Mbit) on the board instead of using configuration PROMs.

By sharing a Flash memory chip on the board both for CPU boot memory and FPGA configuration data, the TE7725PF helps to significantly reduce board size and total costs.

All Virtex-5 LX110/220/330 platforms are available now, with prices starting at US $4980.