Xilinx Enhances Popular XtremeDSP Solutions Video Starter Kit to Accelerate Video Development

-- Xilinx, Inc. (Nasdaq: XLNX), today announced the availability of its XtremeDSP(TM) Solutions Video Starter Kit - Spartan(R)-3A DSP FPGA Edition 2.0, a comprehensive platform that accelerates the development of video applications on Xilinx FPGAs. Designed to leverage the cost/performance advantages of Spartan-3A DSP FPGAs, the latest version of the kit offers an updated set of video reference designs, based on an embedded design framework, that allow customers to focus on their unique value added development.

The new version of the XtremeDSP Solutions Video Starter Kit features new reference designs and IP that provide expanded support for emerging video standards in standard- and high-definition video processing. The reference designs jumpstart video development by providing starting point examples that demonstrate how complete video systems can be created by integrating video sources from camera, DVI and S-Video interfaces into video processing pipelines, frame buffers and embedded systems using the Xilinx ISE(R) Design Suite. Users can leverage the flexibility and parallelism of the Spartan-3A DSP FPGA to take advantage of up to 30 GMACS of performance for sophisticated video processing algorithms such as image enhancement, object recognition and video analysis commonly used in security analytics, machine vision and automotive driver assistance applications.

"The Video Starter Kit eliminates over 50% of the development tasks a designer would typically need to perform when developing a new video processing system," said Tim Erjavec, director, Platform Solutions and Services Marketing at Xilinx. "Customers often have initial designs running in the first day and ultimately save several weeks of development time by only having to focus on parts of the design where they provide unique value."

What's Inside

The kit includes example designs and user documentation to make it easy to get started quickly. Reference designs include examples of DVI pass through, DVI frame buffer, camera frame buffer and S-Video processing designs controlled and configured by the MicroBlaze(TM) embedded processor. The XtremeDSP Solutions Video Starter Kit takes advantage of modular hardware design and powerful development tools to enable system integration, development, and hardware accelerated co-simulation of video algorithms in real time. Several Xilinx application notes and reference designs using Xilinx IP cores and System Generator for DSP are available online to provide additional design assistance.

The Video Starter Kit features a Xilinx Spartan-3A DSP XC3SD3400A device,, 256 MB DDR DRAM, platform flash configuration PROM, FPGA mezzanine card (FMC) expansion connectors, 10/100 Ethernet port, video DAC, RS-232 port, audio input/output ports, PS2 keyboard and mouse ports, 1 MB SRAM, 256 Kb serial EEPROM, and a variety of user switches and LEDs.

Additional Xilinx tool support includes the Embedded Development Kit (EDK), System Generator for DSP tool, and Xilinx ISE(R) Foundation(TM) software.

Pricing & Availability

The XtremeDSP Video Starter Kit - Spartan(R)-3A DSP FPGA Edition 2.0 is available immediately and includes all hardware, design software, reference designs, cables, VGA camera and FMC-Video Interface Daughter card for development engineers. Pricing starts at $1595.00.

About Xilinx

Xilinx is the worldwide leader in complete programmable logic solutions. For more information, visit http://www.xilinx.com.