Development kit for 65nm FPGA

Leading FPGA company has introduced a development kit for PCI Express that allows designers to bring products based on FPGAs to market quickly and easily.

Xilinx has introduced the Virtex-5 FPGA development kit for PCI Express.

The development kit is based on the Virtex-5 family of FPGAs, the industry's first 65nm FPGA to be listed on the PCI SIG integrators list.

The complete solution includes a development kit and protocol pack files that accelerate time to market for designers developing 1 to 8-lane PCIe applications in communications and networking, video and broadcast, storage and computing, industrial as well as aerospace/defense markets.

Designers now have access to everything needed to evaluate and design with the Xilinx end-point block for PCI Express.

Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs, with built-in endpoint blocks for PCI Express and low power 3.2Gbit/s RocketIO GTP transceivers, provide a fully integrated solution that has passed the PCI-SIG Compliance Workshop "plugfest" for v1.1.

With thousands of Virtex-5 devices shipped since May 2006, the development kit serves to further expand customer adoption of 65nm FPGAs.

"Xilinx has taken ease-of-use to the next level by offering PCI Express development kits with all of the necessary design components such as interoperability-tested add-in card, design resources, and drivers without sacrificing the FPGA flexibility and programmability", says Steve Berry, Principal Analyst, Electronic Trends Publishing, a leading market-research firm.

"Such shrink-wrapped system solutions give a head start to designers not familiar with FPGAs and/or PCI Express helping Xilinx expand its market share".

With this development kit, Xilinx kicked off an initiative that allows engineers to get a PCI Express design up and running right out of the box within an hour.

Each development kit includes all components needed to complete a Virtex-5 FPGA based PCI Express design: 8-lane PCI Express add-in card (ML555); Virtex-5, XC5VLX50T-1FF1136 FPGA with built-in block for PCI Express endpoint and 3.2Gbit/s RocketIO GTP transceivers; intellectual property (IP) cores to develop 1 to 8-lane PCIe endpoint+PHY in the FPGA; reference designs and software; Windows driver toolkit from Jungo; Windows-based GUI; platform USB FPGA download cable; resource CD; quick-start guide in English, Japanese, Korean and traditional and simplified Chinese; and technical documentation.

The kit is supported by the Virtex-5 protocol pack for PCI Express and includes protocol-specific physical layer characterisation report, IP cores, interoperability data, and technical documentation.

"As the adoption of serial connectivity continues to rapidly expand, our Virtex-5 LXT and SXT devices with built-in serial transceivers and PCI Express blocks are being deployed in an increasing number of existing and new applications", says Per Holmberg, Marketing Director of the Programmable Digital Systems group at Xilinx.

"Our complete PCIe solution and development kit will enable thousands of designers to adopt PCI Express by reducing design risk and lowering total system design cost through fast and reliable design closure".

Xilinx Virtex-5 LXT FPGA Development kit for PCI Express is available for immediate order at a price of US $2200.

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