Xilinx Ships Virtex-5 FXT FPGAs, Delivering the Ultimate in System Integration for...

Xilinx Ships Virtex-5 FXT FPGAs, Delivering the Ultimate in System Integration
for Designs That Demand High-Performance Processing and High-Speed Serial I/O
Fourth Platform in 65nm Virtex-5 Family of FPGAs Now Available With PowerPC
440 Processor Block, GTX High Speed Transceivers, and over 190 GMACs DSP
performance

SAN JOSE, Calif., March 31 /PRNewswire/ -- Xilinx, Inc. (Nasdaq: XLNX),
the world's leading provider of programmable solutions, today announced the
availability of Virtex(R)-5 FXT devices, the industry's first FPGAs with
embedded PowerPC(R) 440 processor blocks, high-speed RocketIO(TM) GTX
transceivers and dedicated XtremeDSP(TM) processing capabilities. Comprising
the fourth platform in the 65nm Virtex-5 family, Virtex-5 FXT devices deliver
high performance while enabling designers to reduce system costs, board space
and component count. With support from Xilinx and industry-leading providers
of logic, embedded and DSP development tools, and IP cores, Virtex-5 FXT FPGAs
deliver the ultimate system integration platform for applications in: wired
and wireless communications, audio/video broadcast equipment, military,
aerospace, industrial systems, and many others.
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(Photo: here)
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"The integration of major processing and SERDES components on a single
device will be of significant value to designers who need to conserve board
space and costs, while meeting stringent requirements for high-performance,"
said analyst Will Strauss, President and Founder of Forward Concepts. "In
wireless, for example, the kind of base stations a technology like the
Virtex-5 FXT platform can enable is enviable, especially in the area of LTE
(Long-Term Evolution) basebands in support of 4G communications systems."
With today's announcement, Xilinx has completed the introduction of the
four domain-optimized Virtex-5 FPGA platforms that comprise the Virtex-5
family. The Virtex-5 family -- the first FPGA family to deliver the
performance, density, and cost benefits of 65nm -- offers unprecedented
performance and density gains with speeds on average 30 percent faster and a
logic capacity 65 percent greater than previous 90nm generation FPGAs. Xilinx
achieved this breakthrough performance while at the same time reducing dynamic
power consumption by 35 percent relative to the previous generation devices.
The four domain-optimized platforms -- LX, LXT, SXT, and FXT -- offer a wide
range of devices that enable engineers to cost-effectively implement
electronics systems by selecting an FPGA that incorporates the optimal mix of
resources for their particular design: logic, I/O, and hardened IP blocks for
logic-intensive, embedded processing, digital signal processing (DSP), and
serial connectivity applications. For more information about the Virtex-5
family, please visit www.xilinx.com/virtex5.
Highest performance embedded processing block
The innovative Virtex-5 FXT platform offers the first FPGAs to provide up
to two industry-standard PowerPC 440 processor blocks. Each processor, with
integrated 32KB instruction and 32KB data caches, delivers up to 1,100 DMIPS
at 550 MHz. Tightly coupled to the PowerPC440 blocks is a new integrated 5x2
cross bar processor interconnect architecture that provides simultaneous
access to I/O and memory. Highly integrated, this innovative interconnect
architecture includes dedicated master and slave processor local bus
interfaces, four DMA ports with separate transmit and receive channels, and a
dedicated memory bus interface enabling high-performance, low latency
point-to-point connectivity.
Designers can rapidly and easily implement advanced scalable embedded
processing applications using the PowerPC 440 embedded processor blocks. The
advanced PLB architecture maximizes data transfers between the processor,
crossbar and soft IP logic with high-throughput 128-bit interfaces to help
minimize system bottlenecks. Also, the enhanced high-performance Auxiliary
Processor Control Unit (APU) provides added connectivity for dedicated
co-processing engines or custom user defined instructions in applications such
as video processing, 3D data processing and floating-point math.
With the release of EDK 10.1, the PowerPC440 block in Virtex-5 FXT is
supported by industry standard operating systems including Wind River Systems,
Green Hills, and other key embedded OS providers. Linux support is provided
through MontaVista, Wind River Systems with others soon to be added. In
addition, Xilinx is actively engaged in the open source Linux community.
Advanced Serial Connectivity
To address the growing demand for higher I/O bandwidth, the Virtex-5 FXT
platform includes high-performance, low-power RocketIO GTX transceivers
capable of supporting data rates from 500 Mbps to 6.5Gbps. Customers can
design applications supporting standards such as XAUI, Fibre Channel, SONET,
Serial RapidIO, PCI Express(R) 1.1 and 2.0, Interlaken, and others. Consuming
less than 200mW typical power per channel at 6.5Gbps, the GTX transceivers
come with many advanced features such as 4-tap DFE receiver equalization in
addition to linear equalization and transmit pre-emphasis to improve signal
integrity at higher line rates. The new transceiver blocks also include a
unique multi-code physical coding sublayer to support both 64B/66B and 64B/67B
encoding/decoding schemes saving thousands of logic cells for each channel. In
addition, cross-platform pin compatibility enables customers who have designs
targeting Virtex-5 LXT and SXT devices to migrate their designs to Virtex-5
FXT devices in order to take advantage of the higher-performance embedded
processing and serial connectivity.
Innovative Signal Processing Capabilities
The Virtex-5 FXT platform includes up to 384 DSP slices and 16.5 Mb of
internal memory that can be configured to provide over 190 GMACs of DSP
processing performance and 92 tera-bits/sec of memory bandwidth respectively
at 500 MHz. This balance of hardware resources maximizes the performance for
computation-intensive applications typical of DSP and video applications. The
DSP48E slice, available in all XtremeDSP(TM) Virtex(R)-5 devices, enables
higher levels of DSP integration and lower power consumption than
previous-generation Virtex devices. Over 40 dynamically controlled operating
modes are supported including: multiplier, multiplier-accumulator,
multipler-adder/subtractor, tree input adder, barrel shifter, wide counters
and comparators.
"To meet both the market and bandwidth requirements of transporting voice,
video and data, today's system on chip solutions must combine flexibility with
very high-performance embedded processing, digital signal processing and
connectivity capabilities," said Steve Douglass, vice president of product
development for the Xilinx Advanced Product Group. "The Virtex-5 FXT platform
ties the high-performance logic and DSP processing capabilities of the
Virtex-5 family with industry standard PowerPC 440 processor blocks for
high-performance processing and high-speed transceivers that can move data on
and off chip fast."
Design Support
The Virtex-5 FXT FPGA platform is supported by the new ISE(R) Design Suite
10.1 development tools from Xilinx. This recently announced unified
development offering includes access to all the domain specific tools to
streamline complete system designs for logic, embedded and DSP applications.
This includes ISE(R) Foundation(TM), Embedded Development Kit (EDK), System
Generator for DSP, AccelDSP(TM) synthesis tool, ChipScope(TM) Pro and
ChipScope Pro serial I/O Toolkit, PlanAhead(TM) design and analysis tool and
ISE simulator.
In addition to simplified installation and registration processes, ISE
Design Suite 10.1 introduces inter-tool integration improvements and makes all
products, purchased or not, available for evaluation. For more information
about the new ISE Design Suite, please visit www.xilinx.com/ise.
Pricing and Availability
Virtex-5 FXT FPGA samples are now shipping for the FX30T and FX70T
devices. The remaining FX100T, FX130T and FX200T devices will be available
over the next six months with the first production devices scheduled to be
made available in the third quarter of 2008. The FX30T device will list for
US$159 in 1,000 unit volumes by the second half of 2009. The Virtex(R)-5
EasyPath(TM) program supports Virtex-5 FXT devices for high-volume cost
reductions. For more information, please visit:
www.xilinx.com/virtex5fxt
About Xilinx
Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) is the worldwide leader of programmable logic
solutions. Additional information about Xilinx is available at
www.xilinx.com.
Xilinx, the Xilinx logo, Virtex, ISE, and other designated brands included
herein are trademarks of Xilinx. PCI and PCI Express are trademarks of PCI-SIG
and used under license. PowerPC is a trademark of IBM and used under license.

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Editorial Contacts:
Bruce Fienberg
Xilinx, Inc.
(408) 879-4631
bruce.fienberg@xilinx.com

SOURCE Xilinx, Inc.

Bruce Fienberg of Xilinx, Inc., +1-408-879-4631, bruce.fienberg@xilinx.com