Product category:
VMEbus Boards and Assemblies
News Release from: Vmetro | Subject: ADC510
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 24 April 2008
Mezzanine card hosts FPGA-centric I/O
Innovative design, based on the emerging VITA 57.1 standard, makes it easier for developers to integrate FPGAs into their embedded system designs.
Vmetro has developed the industry's first FPGA Mezzanine Card (FMC/VITA 57) module The ADC510, available in air-cooled and conduction-cooled rugged versions, integrates two 12bit 500MHz A/D chips for use in DSP applications such as signal intelligence (sigint), electronic counter measures (ECM) and radar
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 23 Jul 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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This innovative design, based on the emerging VITA 57.1 standard, makes it easier for developers to integrate FPGAs into their embedded system designs.
The ADC510 supports two Texas Instruments ADS5463 ADCs with each device supporting a sampling rate up to 500Msample/s and providing 12bit digital output.
The ADC device interfaces are routed to the FMC connector to enable an FPGA on a baseboard to directly control and receive data.
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There is a choice of sample clock sources for the ADC510 including an onboard source that supports sampling rates of 300, 320, 400 and 500Msample/s as well as the ability to use an external sample clock.
Input and output triggers are provided to enable multiple ADC510 modules to be synchronised to increase the number of input channels.
"The introduction of the first FMC module marks a new generation in I/O aimed at FPGAs - developers continue to benefit from high-bandwidth low-latency coupling between an FPGA and I/O with a new level of industry standard flexibility", comments Thomas Nygaard, Chief Technology Officer of Vmetro.
"FMC modules such as the ADC510 can be integrated with baseboards such as Vmetro's FPE650 (a 6U VPX board with four Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs and two FMC sites) to create very powerful solutions".
FMCs address the needs of FPGA centric I/O by enabling I/O devices that reside on an industry standard mezzanine card to be attached to, and directly controlled by, FPGAs that reside on a baseboard.
The benefits of FMCs are a small footprint, reduced I/O bottlenecks, increased flexibility, and reduced cost by removing redundant interfaces.
An FMC module is about half the size of a PMC mezzanine module.
To maximise data throughput and minimise latency, the FMC connector has many pins that support high-speed signals for moving data between the FMC and an FPGA on the baseboard.
FMCs are ideal for high speed analogue I/O, digital I/O, fibre-optics, memory or even a DSP coprocessor.
"The emerging FMC standard will reduce design costs and time to market by bringing the benefits of modular design much closer to the FPGA user community", states Raj Seelam, DSP Solutions Product Manager at Xilinx.
"The combination of high-speed I/O FMC modules, such as Vmetro's ADC510, and our latest Virtex-5 SXT FPGA technology is very compelling for a variety of DSP applications".
Vmetro makes available HDL example code for the ADC510 for integration into the HDL development suite for Vmetro FPGA baseboards.
The ADC510 is the first of a family of FMC modules being developed by Vmetro. Request a free brochure from Vmetro ...
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