FPGAs are optimised for aerospace and defence

Xilinx has announced availability of Virtex-4 QPRO MIL-grade family of aerospace and defence products.

Xilinx has announced availability of Virtex-4 QPRO MIL-grade family of aerospace and defence products.

The delivery of the first domain-optimised Virtex-4 FPGAs to the aerospace and defence marketplace provides the industry's most comprehensive 'space to base' device portfolio with higher performance, lower power options and full military temperature-qualification.

The release continues the FPGA leader's proven track record of delivering products that address the performance, flexibility and quality requirements of the aerospace and defence markets and further expands the reach of Xilinx FPGAs into the US $1 billion programmable logic segment.

The new Virtex-4 QPRO family builds on the existing Virtex-II QPRO device offering, which includes the industry's first military temperature-qualified FPGA with an embedded processor core, introduced in January 2005.

"Xilinx has demonstrated an unwavering commitment over 15 years to bringing leading-edge programmable technology to military temperature and radiation-tolerant applications from space to base", stated Eric Sivertson, General Manager for Aerospace and Defense at Xilinx.

"Our approach has always been to deliver complete programmable logic solutions with silicon, software, and design support".

"The domain-optimised Virtex-4 QPRO family takes this approach to a new level that addresses the transformational requirements of today's aerospace and defence programmes with unprecedented flexibility and higher performance, lower power architectures".

Xilinx Virtex-4 QPRO FPGAs are an enhanced subset of Xilinx FPGAs targeted specifically at the stringent requirements of aerospace and defense applications.

Devices include the Virtex-4 XQ4VLX25 (24,192 logic cells), Virtex-4 XQ4VLX60 (59,904 logic cells) for logic-intensive designs, and the Virtex-4 XQ4VSX55 (55,296 logic cells) for high-performance digital signal processing (DSP).

The domain-optimised approach inherent to the Virtex-4 family makes it possible for aerospace and defence designers to select the optimal mix of resources for their specific application.

Features such as the logic fabric, block memory, clock management, and the XtremeDSP slices are all performance matched to support up to a 500MHz clock speed.

The hardened intellectual property (IP) blocks coupled with 90nm triple-oxide technology enables lower power consumption reduced by as much as 50% over previous generation devices.

Xilinx aerospace and defence products including the new Virtex-4 QPRO family are backed by robust manufacturing process control systems and extended lifecycles that typically exceed 10 years to meet the stringent quality and long-term requirements of aerospace and defence programmes.

Today, Xilinx QPRO devices are deployed successfully on many major programmes.

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