FPGA USB Module Cuts Design Time, Cost
Unit is said to eliminate details involved in USB design work
Charles J. Murray, Senior Technical Editor -- Design News, December 19, 2008
A new FPGA USB module promises to cut months off
engineering, prototyping and verification of "logic-heavy" electronic development
projects.
Known as
the XEM3050, the new credit-card-sized
module is targeted device-to-computer integration of such applications as image
capture and signal processing, data acquisition, advanced global positioning
systems (GPS), LIDAR 3D cameras and mobile phone displays.
Engineers at Opal Kelly, designers of the new module, say it simplifies product development through the use of software called FrontPanel, which eliminates the details involved in USB design work. "The difficulty in building a USB solution is primarily one of software," notes Jake Janovetz, founder and president of Opal Kelly. "In most complicated USB designs, one needs to develop drivers and build some kind of link to the hardware. We've tried to mitigate all that design effort."
Along with the FrontPanel software, the XEM3050 module includes HDL simulation models for multiple platforms and Application Programming Interfaces (API) for several languages. It's based on Xilinx's four-million-gate Spartan-3 FPGA (field programmable gate array) and high-speed USB 2.0 protocols.
Opal Kelly says that the module is currently being used to develop a GPS receiver that will be implemented as an ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) in an OEM product. With the XEM3050, the company's engineers say they can run simulations faster than real time, and have therefore dramatically reduced the amount of time required for design verification. The company's engineers say that the module is able to do 20 minutes of verification in 13 minutes, compared to 40 hours using a high-end simulator.
The big benefits to this are time and cost," Janovetz says. "And when you're talking low run production - tens or hundreds of units - that's where it really matters."
