Zynq-7000 EPP sets stage for new era of innovations

Mike Santarini, Xilinx Xcell Journal
6/17/2011 4:27 PM EDT

Xilinx has just unveiled the first devices in a new family built around its Extensible Processing Platform (EPP), a revolutionary architecture that mates a dual ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor with low-power programmable logic and hardened peripheral IP all on the same device. In March of this year, Xilinx officially announced the first four devices of what it has now dubbed the Zynq-7000 EPP family.

Implemented in 28-nanometer process technology, each Zynq-7000 device is built with an ARM dual-core Cortex-A9 MPCore processing system equipped with a NEON media engine and a double-precision floating-point unit, as well as Level 1 and Level 2 caches, a multi-memory controller and a slew of commonly used peripherals (Figure 1). While FPGA vendors have previously fielded devices with both hardwired and soft onboard processors, the Zynq-7000 EPP is unique in that the ARM processor system, rather than the programmable logic, runs the show. That is, Xilinx designed the processing system to boot at power-up (before the FPGA logic) and to run a variety of operating systems independent of the programmable logic fabric. Designers then program the processing system to configure the programmable logic on an as-needed basis.

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