New Xilinx Virtex-6 and Spartan-6 FPGA Connectivity Development Kits Include Northwest Logic DMA Engine IP

SOFTWARE/HARDWARE:  Xilinx Inc. recently announced the availability of the new Xilinx^® Virtex^®-6 and Spartan^®-6 FPGA Connectivity Development Kits that provide a comprehensive, easy-to-use, and hardware validated development environment. A key component of the new kits is the Connectivity Targeted Reference Designs that contain Northwest Logic’s high-performance, scatter-gather DMA Engine IP. The Northwest Logic® DMA Engine IP, in combination with the other elements of the kits, provides high-bandwidth operation for a wide variety of PCI Express®-based applications enabling customers to quickly develop and deploy designs for a broad range of high-speed connectivity applications.The Xilinx Connectivity Kits minimize overall development time by providing a fully integrated development environment complete with FPGA boards, cables, documentation, design tools and IP (intellectual property) cores integrated into Targeted Reference Designs. As a key member of the Xilinx Alliance Program, Northwest Logic collaborated with Xilinx from the initial definition through final release of the connectivity Targeted Reference Designs, to ensure they provide high-bandwidth operation under real system conditions. This performance can be validated by customers using the performance monitor interface built into the Targeted Reference Design.

The Northwest Logic DMA Back-End Core provides a complete, high-performance DMA engine optimized to work with Xilinx integrated PCI Express Endpoint Block plus core and external memory interface soft IP in Virtex-6 FPGAs and hard memory interface IP available in Spartan-6 FPGAs. The Northwest Logic DMA engine includes target and register interfaces and can automatically fetch DMA descriptors or use DMA descriptors provided locally.

The collaboration between Xilinx and Northwest Logic is one example of the broad ecosystem Xilinx is building to bring industry-leading IP components to its customers as part of fully integrated and tested Xilinx Targeted Reference Designs.

The Xilinx Connectivity Targeted Design Platforms provide a starting point for a broad variety off SoC (system-on-chip) applications including:

The Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA Connectivity Kit is complete and easy-to-use, enabling designs with industry-standard high-speed serial protocols including PCI Express (version 1.1), Ethernet (GMII, SFP), and DDR3 SDRAM (using built-in hard memory controller) as well as enabling designs using other serial standards and proprietary implementations up to 3.125Gbps and multiple parallel protocols including 3.3V I/O standards.

Similarly, the Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGA Connectivity Development Kit enables advanced connectivity designs with PCI Express 1.1/2.0, Ethernet (GMII, SFP, XAUI), SATA and other proprietary high-speed serial protocols with line rates up to 6.5Gbps, as well as multiple parallel standards running at ~ 1.4Gbps with SelectIO^TM technology.

The Spartan-6 FPGA Connectivity kit is available for order today including a full version the Northwest Logic DMA Back-End Core for $2,495. The Virtex-6 FPGA Connectivity kit will be available in January and includes an evaluation version of the Northwest Logic DMA Back-End Core for $2,995.

- Edited by Liz Taurasi