Xilinx announces low cost development platform for Virtex-4 SX.

Xilinx, Inc. (Nasdaq:XLNX) has announced the immediate availability of its ML402 board--the first XtremeDSP evaluation platform supporting the company's DSP optimized Virtex-4 SX FPGA family. With a ratio of XtremeDSP to logic slices unmatched in the industry, the Virtex-4 SX family is highly optimized for high-performance DSP applications with more than 12 times more multiply and accumulate operations per second (MAC/s) per dollar than the nearest competing FPGA. With only 2.3 mW/100 MHz per MAC, the Virtex-4 XtremeDSP slice also delivers "best-in-class" DSP power consumption for FPGAs.

Powered by the Virtex-4 XC4VSX35-10C FPGA, the ML402 board provides 192 XtremeDSP slices, each capable of operating at 400 MHz to deliver up to 77 billion 18x18 bit MAC/s. The board is supported in the Xilinx DSP development tool, System Generator for DSP. Using the Hardware-in-the-Loop capability of System Generator for DSP, designers can use the ML402 board to verify designs in hardware within the System Generator for DSP development environment.

"The ML402 evaluation platform allows designers to evaluate the superior Xilinx DSP value proposition for high performance signal processing for only $595," said Jerry Banks, director of DSP Solutions Marketing at Xilinx. "The combination of raw parallel processing performance on a continuously flexible hardware platform is a perfect solution for developing high performance DSP co-processing solutions. Add to this the DSPoptimized architecture, resources and design environment of the Virtex-4 SX family, and designers have the most powerful, cost-effective DSP design platform ever produced."

The compliment of resources provided on the Virtex-4 ML402 XtremeDSP Evaluation Platform includes a 4VSX35 device, 64 MB DDR SDRAM, 1 MB ZBT SRAM, 32 MB Compact Flash, 8 MB Flash, 4 kb IIC EEPROM, and 32 Mb Platform Flash. The platform also offers a host of industry-standard peripherals, connectors, and interfaces, providing a rich feature set that spans a wide range of applications.

Designed for use with the Xilinx System Generator for DSP development tool and Xilinx DSP IP algorithms, the ML402 XtremeDSP Evaluation Platform provides a straightforward entry-level environment for developing high-performance signal-processing systems based on the Viretx-4 SX FPGA. The combination of the System Generator tool and the ML402 Evaluation Platform creates a well-integrated design flow from algorithm concept to hardware verification.

The System Generator for DSP tool interfaces with The Mathworks' MATLAB/ Simulink tools, enabling designer to perform hardware co-simulation on the ML402 platform via JTAG. Xilinx also offers a the DSP Design Flow and DSP Implementation Techniques courses created to facilitate a quick ramp-up to the customer's initial design completion. Xilinx augments these classes with access to a staff of senior DSP support engineers through the Xilinx Hotline.