New board well suited for data centre applications

Called the XUSP3S, the board is a ³/₄-length PCIe card based on the Xilinx Virtex or Kintex UltraScale FPGA. The board offers four front panel QSFP28 cages, each supporting up to 100Gbps (4×25) - including 100GbE. Flexible memory configurations include up to 64-GBytes of memory across four 72-bit wide banks as well as support for Hybrid Memory Cube.

The XUSP3S also incorporates a Board Management Controller (BMC) for advanced system monitoring, which greatly simplifies platform integration and management. Sophisticated clocking and timing options, and up to four Gen3 x8 PCIe interfaces, round out the board’s feature set. All of these features mean the XUSP3S is well suited for a range of data centre and networking applications, including network processing and security, acceleration, storage, broadcast and SigInt. The XUSP3S is the first board in BittWare’s family of boards featuring Xilinx UltraScale devices with follow-on boards to include a low profile PCIe card.

“BittWare has been exclusively focused on high end FPGA boards for over a decade, and until now we hadn’t had a single Xilinx-based offering. Xilinx UltraScale FPGAs were so compelling that we recognised that we had to change that,” said Jeffry Milrod, President and CEO of BittWare. “We have been amazed by the ease of bring-up, the stability and the performance of these FPGAs. The transceivers are rock solid at 25Gbps, external memory interfaces easily achieved max speeds, power is as promised, and we are in full production. With surprising adoption in pre-production, the XUSP3S has already been a huge success and is a wonderful way to kick off our new Xilinx-based product line.”

“Xilinx is excited to have BittWare join our Alliance Program and deliver their first UltraScale-based board as we continue to see enormous demand across the industry for Xilinx UltraScale technology,” added Chris Hallahan, Director of the Xilinx Alliance Program. “BittWare's 400G of bandwidth and broad range of UltraScale device support, from the VU080 all the way up to the industry leading VU190, is very compelling for data centre customers as well as many other high performance applications.”

XUSP3S overview

• High performance Xilinx Virtex UltraScale 80/95/125/160/190 or Kintex UltraScale 115 
• Up to four independent PCIe Gen3 x8 interfaces

• One x8 interface in a standard slot
• Two x8 interfaces requires bifurcated slot; two additional interfaces via expansion port (requires a second slot) 

• Four QSFP28 cages for 4x 100GbE, 16x 25GbE, 4x 40GbE, or 16x 10GbE

• Support for a range of optical transceivers and other high speed serial protocols
• All four QSFPs can be combined for 400GbE

• Memory

• Up to 32 GBytes of on-board DDR4-2400 SDRAM with optional error correcting codes (ECC)
• Two SODIMM sites providing an additional 32GB DDR4 SDRAM, QDR-IV or QDR-II+
• Support for Hybrid Memory Cube via serial expansion interface

• Board Management Controller for Intelligent Platform Management
• USB 2.0 for programming, debug or control with optional integrated Platform Cable USB functionality.
• Timestamping and synchronisation support

• Dual SMA for reference clock/synchronisation inputs
• Tunable high accuracy TCXO
• Programmable clock synthesiser (Si5338)

• Complete software support with BittWare’s BittWorks II Toolkit 
• FPGA development kit for FPGA board support IP and integration