Low-cost FPGAs offer dense logic and memory

XA Spartan-3A FPGAs offer the highest number of I/O per logic cell with broad connectivity support, providing flexibility and scalability for I/O-intensive display and LED backlight applications.

Xilinx has released the Xilinx Automotive (XA) Spartan-3A and Spartan-3A DSP FPGAs, significantly expanding its portfolio of low-cost automotive-qualified devices.

These new offerings bring domain-optimised solutions for high I/O-logic ratio and high-bandwidth digital signal processing (DSP) with low power consumption and advanced design security to the development of infotainment, hybrid cluster and driver assistance systems.

XA Spartan-3A FPGAs offer the highest number of I/O per logic cell with broad connectivity support, providing flexibility and scalability for I/O-intensive display and LED backlight applications.

XA Spartan-3A DSP devices add more logic, memory and XtremeDSP slices, packing more raw DSP throughput than any other low-cost PLD device, with parallel processing power on a scale never before seen in automotive electronics.

The addition of these two families to the XA portfolio delivers FPGA-based solutions optimised for TFT displays, image and video processing and in-vehicle networking in automotive applications.

"Automotive manufacturers are constantly working to improve the quality and reliability of electronic components".

"Our XA FPGA-based solutions enable automotive designers to reduce board complexity by taking on more functionality and system integration", said Kevin Tanaka, Worldwide Automotive Marketing and Product Planning Manager for the Automotive Division at Xilinx.

"XA Spartan-3A and Spartan-3A DSP devices take it to the next level".

"They offer unprecedented low-cost connectivity and DSP capabilities and new power management and security features with tighter overall design integration".

"All of which enhances the reliability of the devices and the electronics systems being designed for the automotive market".

Next-generation dashboards will be a mix of analogue and digital functionality.

These hybrid clusters require a high I/O count in order to control analogue gauges and LED lighting, as well as advanced I/O capabilities such as LVDS and RSDS to intelligently control displays.

For example, LED backlighting, where each LED in the cluster must be adjusted for colour and brightness, was previously managed using a CPLD alongside a microcontroller.

Now, this all can be integrated 'on-board' in XA Spartan-3A devices with the embedded Xilinx 32bit MicroBlaze soft microprocessor.

XA Spartan-3A devices are I/O-optimised for the lowest cost per I/O in the PLD industry with up to 1.4 million system gates and 502 I/Os.

They are the only FPGAs compliant with 26 popular single-ended and differential signaling standards and also support market-specific networking standards, such as CAN, MOST and FlexRay.

These devices use source-synchronous interfacing technology, cost-optimised to ensure optimal design margins.

They also introduce dual-power management (suspend and hibernate modes); device configuration capabilities; a reduction in the number of power rails from three to two; and permanent DeviceDNA serial numbering to safeguard hardware and software intellectual property (IP).

The automotive industry is quickly adopting camera, radar and lidar sensing technologies for use in driver assistance systems.

This relatively new area encompasses such applications as night vision and lane departure warning systems, with an eye towards pedestrian and sign recognition in the future.

While these systems are still optional in most vehicles, the growth rate is phenomenal with occupant safety a major focus for consumers and many governments around the world.

Continued innovation in this domain will require the high-bandwidth processing, flexibility and scalability built into XA Spartan-3A DSP devices.

XA Spartan-3A DSP devices deliver over 30 GMACS and 2200Gbit/s memory bandwidth, closing the bandwidth gap automotive designers face with current serial DSP designs.

The cost-optimised XtremeDSP DSP48A slice enables designers to implement many independent arithmetic functions.

Multiple slices can be connected together without the use of general logic fabric, reducing power consumption while delivering high performance and efficient silicon utilisation.

These slices, combined with a hard-coded DSP pre-adder and multiply accumulate (MAC) blocks provide more than enough processing capacity to execute complex image algorithms much faster than any serial DSP on the automotive market today.

In addition, the XA Spartan-3A DSP family provides up to 53,712 logic cells, 2268kbyte of performance-enhanced Block RAM and 373kbyte of distributed RAM that collectively can be configured to optimise for a broad range of signal processing requirements.

Customers can immediately begin designing with commercial XC versions of the Spartan-3A and Spartan-3A DSP devices and current Xilinx development tool suite.

Back to top