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Targeted Platform Design
What in the heck are we talking about? Well, we manufacture, sell, and support a programmable part that can just about solve any problem. In an effort to make easier the job of building a networked, remote hosted ‘framistat’ (insert your favorite application here), the challenge is to identify common themes, and then provide a template, with the tools, hardware, software and intellectual property (IP cores) to expedite the development.
The Themes, Today
http://www.xilinx.com/publications/prod_mktg/Targe
Logic, DSP, Embedded, and System are the four offered platforms.
Logic Edition is the traditional “glue logic” application: you have VHDL, or Verilog, and you need it to be realized. This is the traditional flow with which we are all familiar.
DSP Edition is tailored for wireless, wired, video, and audio applications where the development of the algorithms is often not done in a hardware definition language or HDL (VHDL or Verilog), but may still be one of the means to develop your DSP algorithms. The platform supports four different flows for getting to the solution: the traditional HDL flow, a c/c++ or MATLAB® software-based flow, a graphical flow (Simulink® software), and a mixture of any other three.
http://www.xilinx.com/publications/prod_mktg/pn202
Embedded Edition is for systems that also include at least one processor, and the software code. In this environment, the logic, management of IP cores (UART, Memory controllers, Counter/Timer, etc.), and the software are all dealt with by one overall tool, EDK. The hardware and the software may be developed, simulated, and debugged.
System Edition is all of the above: perhaps your application has elements of each platform, and this allows all tools to be available.
It Is Not Just Tools
As depicted by the pyramid in the brochures, you start with a hardware device, Spartan® device or Virtex® device at the base: Spartan with less logic, lower costs, and moderate performance; and Virtex for more logic, more functionality, and maximum performance. The next level is the theme, or platform: Logic, DSP, Embedded. In the logic category, the connectivity solutions form one of the most common platforms (processing packets). Each of these has an assembled, pre-tested, verified printed circuit board, and a collection of applicable IP cores to facilitate development. At the top is your application, differentiated from all the others, unique to your world.
Market Specific
Each application tends to be for a particular market, and Xilinx has collected the expertise required for you to be successful in your market. Examples are: communications, video, and broadcasting. IP cores for your market are available to speed up your time to market.
Trying To Make It Easy
“It is not easy being green” is a humorous tune from Kermit the Frog.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bein%27_Green
But it might as well apply here, too. It is not easy being an FPGA, where we have no idea what we are “going to grow up to be,” as that is determined every time power is applied, and we go find a configuration to execute.
We can lament that we just don’t know what our devices will get used for. But then, we can listen to our customers, and observe all the neat things we end up in, and then work to provide the eco-system where the development of these highly unique and custom solutions becomes more efficient, and timelier to develop.
At the end of the song, Kermit is happy he is green: so, too, are we happy to have invented the FPGA, and led in its applications for more than 25 years.
Austin Lesea
MATLAB and Simulink are
registered trademarks of The MathWorks, Inc. All other trademarks are the
property of their respective owners.
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kcmman
- Ken Chapman holds a first class BSc Degree with honours in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from the University of Surrey. Before obtaining his degree, he spent 4 years working in production environments, making precision instruments and working his way through all levels of a small electronics company. He spent 4 years at Racal Radar Defense Systems combining detailed digital design with all aspects of system integration. Ken joined the UK division of Xilinx in 1991, and was instrumental in developing innovative methods of implementing DSP functions in the Xilinx devices. He has filed several patents while at Xilinx, including the 'MULT_AND' gate seen in each Virtex™ and Spartan-II™ device that has made multipliers and other arithmetic functions smaller and faster.
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peter.a
- Peter Alfke joined Xilinx in 1988 as director of applications engineering. He currently serves as Distinguished Engineer in the Advanced Products Group. He graduated in electronic engineering from the Technical University in Hannover, Germany in 1957. He went on to work in telecom and computer design with LM Ericsson and Litton Industries before moving to California in 1968. He has spent forty years in Applications Engineering with Fairchild, Zilog, AMD, and now Xilinx. He holds more than thirty patents, has authored many application notes, and given worldwide seminars on digital integrated circuits. He is active in the newsgroup comp.arch.fpga.
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austin.lesea
- Austin graduated from UC Berkeley in 1974 and 1975 with his BS EECS in Electromagnetic (E&M) Theory and MS EECS in Communications and Information Theory. He has worked in the telecommunications field for 20 years designing optical, microwave, and copper- based transmission systems. He developed SONET/SDH GPS-based Timing Systems for 12 of those years. For the last ten years at Xilinx, Austin was in the IC Design department for the Virtex product line. His new role is working for Xilinx Research Labs, where he is looking beyond the present technology issues.
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