High-performance FPGA is platform for innovation

Daughterboard with Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGA expands prototyping options using the Altium Innovation Station.

Altium has released a new plug-in daughterboard hosting a Xilinx Virtex-4 high-performance FPGA for its recently announced Altium Innovation Station.

It joins the Xilinx Spartan-3, Altera Cyclone II and Lattice ECP devices in the daughterboard range for the Desktop NanoBoard development platform.

More daughterboards and peripheral boards are planned for release over the coming months.

Altium's Xilinx Virtex-4 daughterboard provides an XC4VLX25-10FF668C FPGA and a range of onboard memories.

As with all daughterboards available from Altium, it can be used with either the new Desktop NanoBoard NB2DSK01 or the previous-generation NanoBoard-NB1.

Altium believes that the future of electronics design lies in moving all core functionality into intelligence programmed into a product, putting this intelligence at the centre of the electronics design process.

Designers can now focus on functionality first, without the need to fix hardware at the start of a design.

Adding to the range of daughterboards available to designers increases their options.

Using these daughterboards as part of the Altium Innovation Station, they can create designs in different programmable devices and deploy them on the desktop NanoBoard for testing, debugging, analysis and redesign.

They can test on the fly, ensuring that they have the most effective design on the best possible choice of programmable device.

The various plug-in daughterboards and peripheral boards can be swapped on the NanoBoard during development, and Altium Designer will automatically reconfigure projects to allow designers to use the new hardware and devices.

This means that designers are free to explore alternative design solutions without the traditional time and cost penalties associated with custom hardware redesigns.

This "soft" approach to design lets hardware and software be developed in parallel.

Design cycles are shortened, the core functionality of a device remains secure from copying and it can be easily updated even after the final hardware is manufactured.

Companies can continue to add value and differentiation to their products with updates, additional features and services developed throughout the life of the product.

"The time has gone when companies could hope to sustain product differentiation by putting functionality into fixed hardware", says Nick Martin, CEO of Altium.

"Programming, rather than manufacturing intelligence into a device, is the only way to protect the unique functionality of a product in today's globalised industry".

"Altium is providing the tools to let all designers innovate in this new marketplace by turning traditional electronics design inside out".

"Altium Designer and the NanoBoard allow electronic product developers to unlock the potential of large-scale programmable devices such as the Xilinx Virtex-4, and build intelligent, connected products that can be easily updated to create and maintain market differentiation over the long term".

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