FPGA-based interface and processing card is high performing

A broad selection of fast, flexible I/O is included, which is particularly suited to wireless applications. Firstly, an IDT CPS-1848 Serial RapidIO (SRIO) Gen 2 switch supports SRIO V2.1 at up to 20Gbps per port. The board also includes three front panel SFP+ optical interfaces that provide flexible high-speed links, and are configurable as CPRI, OBSAI, GigE, SRIO or other standards.

An optional SRIO mini-SAS connector provides high-speed cabled connectivity. Timing and synchronisation is achieved via the front panel or backplane clock I/O, or optionally via GPS. No additional timing equipment is required, which significantly reduces system complexity.

The Virtex-7 FPGA is provided as a VX415T-2 device as the standard build, with options up to the VX690T-2 available for the highest performance applications. It is provided with two banks of DDR3 SDRAM, and a bank of flash memory for storing FPGA configurations and additional software. Separate glue logic allows control, FPGA configuration and flash reprogramming over SRIO.

Available software includes a full Xilinx ISE/EDK example project, and MicroBlaze BSL including flash update. Where possible, this is all provided as source code, to give maximum customer flexibility. The board also contains embedded software for management and control.

Edward Young, managing director at CommAgility, said, “The AMC-V7 provides an optimised combination of FPGA processing power and high-end I/O, making it suited to wireless radio head interface applications.”