DSP platform offers low-cost solution

The XtremeDSP Solutions Starter Platform delivers features for DSP development at a significantly lower cost than alternative FPGA-based DSP development platforms.

Xilinx has released a low-cost development platform for implementing DSP designs using the Spartan-3A DSP family of low-cost FPGAs.

The XtremeDSP Solutions Starter Platform -- Spartan-3A DSP 1800A FPGA Edition is suitable for engineers developing DSP applications that require the performance and price delivered by Spartan-3A DSP devices.

"With the addition of the Spartan-3A DSP family to the XtremeDSP solutions portfolio earlier this year and a new starter board based on the family, engineers now have a low-cost/low-power option for leveraging the parallel computing capabilities of FPGAs for high-performance digital processing", said Tim Erjavec, Director of Embedded and DSP Marketing at Xilinx.

The board delivers features for DSP development at a significantly lower cost than alternative FPGA-based DSP development platforms.

The new development platform delivers instant access to the Spartan-3A DSP family's capabilities and supports industry-standard peripherals, connectors and interfaces.

It is designed for use with the Xilinx System Generator for DSP and ISE software and provides the necessary hardware to not only evaluate the advanced features of the Spartan-3A DSP family, but also to implement complete applications such as portable medical ultrasound, video surveillance and mobile software defined radio systems.

These types of application are characterised by the need for very high DSP computational requirements while delivering optimum power efficiency.

The XtremeDSP Solutions Starter Platform -- Spartan-3A DSP 1800A FPGA Edition includes a VGA port for developing video processing algorithms, an Ethernet 10/100/1000 PHY, as well as an RS-232 port for simple communications with a remote console.

This starter platform also comes equipped with 128M X 32 bit DDR2 SDRAM, 16Mx8 Parallel/BPI configuration Flash, and 64Mbyte of SPI configuration/storage Flash.

Also supported is a full JTAG interface for configuration and debug, as well as a System ACE module connector.

For adding further functionality, the development platform includes an expansion slot to enable designers to integrate add-on cards available from Xilinx distributors.

The parallel computing nature of the FPGA fabric supports much higher sampling rates and more date throughput than a standard digital signal processor, delivering three to four times the performance along with better computational power efficiency.

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