Xilinx Announces New Low Cost, High Performance DSP Development Platform

-- Xilinx, Inc., the world's leading provider of programmable solutions, today introduced a low-cost development platform for implementing DSP designs using the Spartan(TM)-3A DSP family of low-cost FPGAs. The XtremeDSP(TM) Solutions Starter Platform -- Spartan-3A DSP 1800A FPGA Edition is ideal for engineers developing DSP applications that require the performance and price delivered by Spartan-3A DSP devices.

"With the addition of the Spartan-3A DSP family to the XtremeDSP solutions portfolio earlier this year and a new starter board based on the family, engineers now have a low-cost/low-power option for leveraging the parallel computing capabilities of FPGAs for high-performance digital processing," said Tim Erjavec, director of Embedded & DSP Marketing at Xilinx(R). "At just under $300, the board delivers advanced features for DSP development at a significantly lower cost than alternative FPGA-based DSP development platforms."

The new development platform delivers instant access to the Spartan-3A DSP family's capabilities and supports industry-standard peripherals, connectors, and interfaces. It is designed for use with the Xilinx System Generator for DSP and ISE(TM) software and provides the necessary hardware to not only evaluate the advanced features of the Spartan-3A DSP family, but also to implement complete applications such as portable medical ultrasound, video surveillance, and mobile software defined radio systems. These types of application are characterized by the need for very high DSP computational requirements while delivering optimum power efficiency.

The XtremeDSP Solutions Starter Platform -- Spartan-3A DSP 1800A FPGA Edition includes a VGA port for developing video processing algorithms, an Ethernet 10/100/1000 PHY, as well as an RS-232 port for simple communications with a remote console. This starter platform also comes equipped with 128M X 32 bit DDR2 SDRAM, 16Mx8 Parallel/BPI configuration flash, and 64Mb of SPI configuration/storage flash. Also supported is a full JTAG interface for configuration and debug, as well as a System ACE(TM) Module connector. For adding further functionality, the development platform includes an expansion slot to enable designers to integrate add-on cards available from Xilinx distributors.

The Spartan-3A DSP 1800A device offers over 20 billion multiply-accumulates per second (GMACS) for under $30. The parallel computing nature of the FPGA fabric supports much higher sampling rates and more date throughput than a standard digital signal processor, delivering 3 to 4 x the performance along with better computational power efficiency.

Pricing & Availability:

The XtremeDSP Solutions Starter Platform -- Spartan-3A DSP 1800A FPGA Edition is available today for $295. Please visit http://www.xilinx.com/s3adspstarter for more information.

About Xilinx XtremeDSP Solutions

Xilinx is the world's leading supplier of high-performance reconfigurable DSP solutions optimized for performance, price and power. Xilinx XtremeDSP solutions come complete with silicon platforms, design tools, development boards and kits, reference designs and a host of signal processing IP for wireless and multimedia video applications. The XtremeDSP silicon portfolio delivers maximum flexibility with three device platforms: the Virtex(TM)-4 SX platform with over 250 GMACS at 500MHz, Virtex-5 SXT platform for ultra-high bandwidth with over 350 GMACS at 550MHz and integrated low-power serial connectivity, and the Spartan-3A DSP platform with the most price-performance optimized devices offering over 30 GMACS at 250MHz. Detailed information is available at http://www.xilinx.com/dsp.

About Xilinx

Xilinx, Inc. (Nasdaq: XLNX) is the worldwide leader of programmable logic solutions. Additional information about Xilinx is available at http://www.xilinx.com.