Virtex-5 FPGA platform starts production shipping

A Xilinx product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Dec 17, 2008

Xilinx has announced that the Virtex-5 FXT FPGA platform with 6.5 Gbps RocketIO GTX transceivers and embedded PowerPC 440 processor cores has begun shipping in production.

Samples of the transceiver-optimised Virtex-5 TXT FPGA platform are also available.

Virtex-5 65nm high-performance FPGAs give designers a programmable product for high-speed serial and high-performance embedded designs.

'The Virtex-5 FXT platform provides us with an unprecedented level of flexibility and scalability for processing and managing streaming data sources over a wide range of applications.

'The faster multi-gigabit transceivers allow higher bandwidths between the FPGAs on our Wildstar 5 boards, and between the boards and the outside world, enabling a new class of solutions,' said Jane Donaldson, president and chief executive officer of Annapolis Micro Systems.

'Our Corefire FPGA application development tool provides almost effortless technology refresh, to allow the user to take advantage of the new and improved Virtex-5 FXT features.

'The PowerPC 440 processor block, integrated with DSP, PCIe, EMAC and high-speed transceiver capabilities on a single platform, further enhances the capability of these new parts.

Available in five platforms, each optimised for specific application needs, Virtex-5 FPGAs are fabricated in 1V, triple-oxide process technology, providing up to 330,000 logic cells, 1,200 I/O pins, 48 low-power transceivers, and a built-in PowerPC 440 processor, PCIe endpoint and Ethernet MAC blocks, depending upon the device selected.

Currently, all 26 Virtex-5 devices are available for designs backed by extensive IP, hardware development platforms, development tool support, and characterisation reports.

The Virtex-5 FXT FPGA offers an FPGA-based 5 Gbps x8 PCIe 2.0 product, and has recently passed the first round of specification testing at the PCI-SIG Compliance Workshop 62.

It is now on the industry organisation's official integrator's list.

The same GTX transceivers are also available in the TXT platform, enabling customers to take advantage of the high transceiver count and offering a low-risk path to implementing PCIe 2.0-based applications.