28nm FPGA SoCs from Xilinx for commercial avionics with certifiable solutions

Xilinx is now offering certifiable solutions for commercial, military and dual-use avionics systems which are designed using Xilinx's 28nm devices, including 7 series FPGAs and Zynq-7000 All Programmable system-on-a-chip (SoCs).

"We are pleased to be offering unsurpassed support for the commercial avionics market with certifiable solutions that enable use of our latest generation of 28nm FPGAs and All Programmable SoCs for future airborne systems," said Yousef Khalilollahi, senior director, Aerospace and Defense at Xilinx. "These solutions allow our customers to build high performance, all programmable solutions with reduced certification burden and product development cost."

Xilinx says it has established an industry-leading commercial avionics solutions portfolio over the past several years. Through key partnerships with LogiCircuit, Inc., certification representatives, and other IP vendors, Xilinx is rolling out a certifiable IP ecosystem. DO-254 certifiable versions of configurable IP cores include Xilinx's MicroBlaze soft processor, Great River Technologies' ARINC 818 core, other standard avionics interfaces, and many AXI peripherals. The first end-system to utilize several of these cores is expected to enter certification in late 2013. These DO-254 and DO-178 certifiable data packages meet rigorous commercial avionics certification standards, thereby reducing design and development time, certification burden, and non-recurring engineering costs, as per Xilinx.

"This strategic initiative combining LogiCircuit's certification services capabilities, industry-leading DERs, and key FPGA IP solutions, such as Xilinx MicroBlaze and Great River Tech ARINC 818, has paved the way for commercial avionics customers to design high-reliability DAL A/B systems with a consistent template of artifact traceability for programmable systems," said Joe Goode, president of LogiCircuit, Inc. "This is a paradigm shift for avionics customers seeking to take advantage the performance, reliability, and long life-cycle Xilinx FPGAs in safety-critical applications, which greatly streamlines the R&D and certification process."

Xilinx claims these DO-254 certifiable IP solutions build upon its high reliability generation-ahead 28nm silicon which exhibits the lowest intrinsic SEU FIT rate of any commercial SRAM-based technology and is designed for long life applications. Xilinx is offering SEU mitigation and analysis solutions including the fully supported soft error mitigation IP (SEM IP), the SEU FIT rate calculator, publicly available data and test methods, and expert design guidance.

Availability: Beta versions of the DO-254 certifiable configurable IP cores and certification data packages are now available.