Date: 24th June 09

 Xilinx latest design platform for designing FPGA based complex SoC solutions

Xilinx announced the new FPGA Design Platform for developing system-on-chip (SoC) solutions with Xilinx Virtex-6 and Spartan-6 field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). This design platform packs 11.2 release of the ISE Design Suite, IPs, and pre-verified reference designs based on Virtex-6 or Spartan-6 FPGAs.

Kit is designed for both new and experienced FPGA design engineers for application domains such as connectivity, embedded, and digital signal processing (DSP).

The Xilinx Base Targeted Design Platform, or base platform, is tuned to the needs of logic and connectivity designers with evaluation kits that contain the basic building blocks common in virtually all system designs to address a broad set of markets and applications.
Xilinx claims, by utilizing these key system functions that have been pre-validated to work together in the base platform, designers are able to slash development time by as much as half compared to traditional design methodologies. Reference designs aid in implementing advanced features, such as DDR2 and DDR3 memory interfaces, high-speed serial I/O, and on-chip clocking resources. Board schematics and layout files are also provided with the kit.

The new 11.2 version of the ISE Design Suite supports both Virtex-6 and Spartan-6 FPGA families and is designed to work with the latest software from Cadence Design Systems, Inc., Mentor Graphics Corporation, and Synopsys, Inc.

Executive Comments:

"The Xilinx base platform is a complete FPGA development environment that reflects the way traditional hardware designers work. It gives them immediate access to the new Spartan-6 or Virtex-6 FPGA families, tools, IP, and development boards combined in a way that lets them work smarter," said Vin Ratford, senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing and Business Development at Xilinx. "Designers can leverage common IP and reference designs to shorten design time and realize productivity gains that greatly exceed conventional a la carte offerings. By spending less time on developing the infrastructure of an application, designers can spend more time adding value through innovation for their next-generation systems."

"The Xilinx base platform, which includes silicon, tools, IP and boards, provides a complete platform for rapidly creating high-performance PCI Express applications," said Brian Daellenbach, president of Northwest Logic Inc. "Northwest Logic is integrating its high-performance, easy-to-use PCI Express DMA Engine on to this platform. This DMA Engine will be packaged with a demonstration application and drivers to form a complete Connectivity Targeted Reference Design built on the new Spartan-6 and Virtex-6 FPGA base platform. Use of this Targeted Reference Design by Xilinx customers will significantly reduce system development and integration efforts accelerating time to market."

For further details visit: www.xilinx.com