Development kit speeds automotive design

Automotive designers can quickly evaluate devices and get their designs up and running right out of the box.

Xilinx has released the Xilinx Automotive (XA) Electronic Control Unit (ECU) development kit, based on its low-cost family of automotive-qualified Xilinx XA Spartan-3E field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).

The XA Automotive ECU kit provides a platform for rapid development of in-vehicle networking, infotainment, driver assistance and driver information systems.

Xilinx teamed with Si-Gate to develop the XA Automotive ECU development kit.

The kit includes a development board with pre-engineered hardware interfaces and supports a host of automotive application intellectual property (IP).

Automotive designers can quickly evaluate devices and get their designs up and running right out of the box.

"The inherent flexibility and programmability of FPGAs have changed the way automotive systems designers think about development time".

"Now, it's all about making it easier for them to build more complex FPGA-based systems even faster and reducing that key time to market", said Kevin Tanaka, Worldwide Automotive Marketing and Product Planning Manager of the Automotive Division at Xilinx.

"Our new Automotive ECU development kit does just that, enabling integration of low-cost FPGA platforms into a new breed of intelligent in-vehicle electronics".

The XA Automotive ECU development kit provides all the components needed to develop entire subsystems, including an XA1600E development board equipped with an XA Spartan-3E 1.6 million system gate FPGA and on-board hardware interfaces such as CAN 2.0B and C, Ethernet 10/100, USB 2.0, SPI and SCI.

Pre-verified Xilinx and third-party application IP provides the necessary building blocks for developing MOST systems, FlexRay connectivity, along with high and low-speed CAN bus interfaces.

The kit also includes a power supply with universal adapter, programming and custom serial cables, QuickStart Guide and resource CD with a reference design for easy evaluation.

Evaluation versions of the Xilinx Embedded development kit and ISE design tools are also supported.

The XA Spartan-3E FPGA family is tested to meet the needs of high-volume, cost-sensitive automotive electronics applications.

The five-member family offers densities ranging from 100,000 to 1.6 million system gates with various package options.

XA devices are available in both extended-temperature Q-Grade (-40 to +125C) and I-Grade (-40 to +100C) and are qualified to the industry-recognised AEC-Q100 standard.

These 90nm devices deliver more functionality and I/O bandwidth per dollar than previously possible, setting new standards in the programmable logic industry.

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