Starter kit provides entry-level DSPs

At the heart of the Spartan-3A DSP FPGA architecture is the DSP48A slice, which enables designers to implement many independent arithmetic functions.

Xilinx has released the XtremeDSP Starter Kit - Spartan-3A DSP FPGA Edition.

The new kit delivers a complete solution for cost-sensitive DSP application development such as portable medical equipment, low-cost wireless infrastructure, flat panel displays and many other applications that require DSP performance along with low cost and low power.

The starter kit features the low-cost Spartan-3A DSP 1800 FPGA, which offers more than 20 billion multiply-accumulates per second (GMACS).

At the heart of the Spartan-3A DSP FPGA architecture is the DSP48A slice, which enables designers to implement many independent arithmetic functions.

The Spartan-3A DSP FPGA family delivers 25% lower dynamic power, 1.5X faster DSP performance for less money than competing FPGAs.

Also included is system generator for DSP which enables the use of The Mathworks' Matlab and Simulink modelling environments when designing with Xilinx FPGAs.

The new starter kit is part of the Xilinx XtremeDSP solution that also includes the XtremeDSP Video Starter Kit - Spartan-3A DSP FPGA Edition.

"The XtremeDSP Starter Kit -Spartan-3A DSP FPGA Edition is the suitable platform for users who have never designed DSP applications into FPGAs before", said Dean Westman, Vice President of Marketing for the Processor Solutions Group at Xilinx.

"It's attractively priced and includes our premier DSP development tool, System Generator for DSP, that lets new users quickly create DSP designs with Simulink software using an extensive library of over 100 Xilinx-optimised DSP building blocks".

"System Generator makes it easy for new users to familiarise themselves with the capabilities of the XtremeDSP slice and to explore how parallelism can be used to boost the performance of their DSP applications".

The board 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.

It also comes equipped with 128Mbyte X 32 bit DDR2 SDRAM, 16Mbyte x 8 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 module connector, cables and power connector for the System ACE tool.

The development platform includes an expansion slot to enable designers to integrate add-on cards available from Xilinx distributors.

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