FROM THE EDITOR
This week we're attending the Embedded Systems
Conference in San Francisco. FPGAs are taking the embedded systems
space by storm, partially because of low-cost platform-enabled
devices like Xilinx's new Spartan-3E, the subject of our first new
feature this week.
Our second article comes from Xilinx and
AccelChip and discusses an approach to high-performance digital
signal processing (DSP) implementation on FPGAs. The key to unocking
the inherent power of DSP on FPGA is the tool and methodology
piece.
Next week, we'll be bringing you a
wrapup of the embedded systems conference as seen through our
FPGA-colored glasses.
Thanks for
reading! If there's anything we can do to make our publications more
useful to you, please let us know at: comments@fpgajournal.com
Kevin Morris –
Editor
FPGA and Programmable Logic
Journal |
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Find a better job. Browse FPGA Journal’s
new job listings to find challenging and rewarding
opportunities with the FPGA industry’s top companies. Journal
Jobs is specifically for FPGA professionals – more of what
you’re looking for, less of what you’re not.
 Browse
now! |
FPGA Journal has teamed with
Demos on Demand™ to provide streaming video demos
from over 70 EDA, PLD and IP vendors to our readers.
Programming is comprised of in-depth product demos from across
the entire spectrum of IC design, from ESL design entry
through layout--as presented by product managers, AEs, and
other subject matter experts.
 Click here for
info.
|
Hire the best FPGA talent in the industry
with FPGA Journal Job Listings. Starting this month you can
reach 30,000 active FPGA professionals by advertising your
FPGA-related positions in Journal Jobs.
 Click here for
info. | |
|
|
CURRENT FEATURE
ARTICLES
Two
Bucks
Xilinx Introduces Spartan-3E
Plug
and Play Design Methodologies for FPGA-based Signal
Processing
by Narinder Lall, Xilinx, Inc. and
Eric Cigan, AccelChip, Inc.
Lattice
Launches XP
Non-Volatility at the
Forefront of FPGA
High-Density
FPGA-to-ASIC Conversions using Structured ASIC: Fills the Gap
by Rick Mosher and Bob Kirk, AMI Semiconductor,
Inc.
Breakthrough
Bandwidth
SerDes Hits New
Heights
Making
the Jump to 10G
by Abhijit Athavale and Brian
Seemann, Xilinx, Inc.
Co-Verification
Methodology for Platform FPGAs
by
Milan Saini, Xilinx, Inc.
and Ross Nelson, Mentor
Graphics
Simulator
Savvy
Getting the Most
From Your HDL
The
Impact of Timing Exceptions on FPGA Performance
by James Henson, FishTail
Design Automation Inc.
Prime-time
Processing
Are Embedded Systems on FPGA
Ready? |
Two Bucks
Xilinx Introduces
Spartan-3E
For two US dollars, you can buy a bottle of
water from the vending machine in a New York hotel lobby, or you could buy
a single subway token. You could get into a New York taxicab, but you’d
have to get right back out again. If you’re driving your own car, you
could buy one gallon of unleaded gasoline. At most coffee houses, you
could get a cup of plain drip coffee, but not an espresso drink. You could
probably talk to your attorney for about 10 seconds. When it comes right
down to it, two dollars won’t buy you very much. Now, however, it will get
you a Xilinx Spartan-3E 100,000-gate FPGA with 72KB of block RAM, 4 18X18
hard multipliers, and 108 user I/Os.
Xilinx reckons that, within the last seven years, they’ve
dropped the price of a single gate of programmable logic by a factor of
thirty. This more than doubles the not-so-leisurely pace of Moore’s Law.
During the same period, cell-based ASICs have probably fallen behind Mr.
Moore due to skyrocketing NREs (and possibly Mr. Moore’s high-tech running
shoes.) What this means is that the old equation for deciding which device
should be at the center of your new high-volume application has undergone
some major changes. [more]
Plug and Play Design Methodologies for
FPGA-based Signal Processing
by Narinder Lall, Xilinx,
Inc
and Eric Cigan, AccelChip, Inc
Digital signal processing has traditionally been the
domain of DSP processors and ASICs. Since the late 1990s, FPGAs have
emerged as alternative options for DSP designers. FPGAs are a good fit for
applications that demand higher performance than what DSP processors can
offer, yet do not meet the criteria to justify ASIC economics.
FPGAs Make Their Mark on Signal Processing
FPGAs have evolved from those where DSP structures were built
using logic-only cells to those having dedicated embedded DSP structures,
such as dynamically reconfigurable XtremeDSP slices in Xilinx Virtex-4
FPGAs. Such FPGAs incorporate tremendous parallel processing capability.
For example, new Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGAs support as many as 512 MAC engines,
each capable of providing up to 500MHz throughput. Figure 1 shows how
FPGAs for signal processing have evolved over the years. [more] |
