Xilinx Virtex-7 FPGA based AMC signal processing module

Giles Peckham, EMEA Marketing Director at Xilinx, comments: “The Virtex-7 family of FPGAs provide excellent performance with their high density, low power 28nm technology, enabling them to handle complex system requirements. By including a Virtex-7 FPGA in their latest AdvancedMC module, together with fast I/O and powerful DSPs, CommAgility has created a board that can meet tough processing challenges.”

Featuring a high density XC7VX415T-2 Virtex-7 FPGA as standard, the AMC-V7-2C6678 is also available with other FPGA options on request. Offering best-in-class total power consumption that is 50% less than the previous generation, Virtex-7 FPGAs provide high DSP performance and I/O bandwidth.

In order to provide high speed I/O to support the FPGA and two DSPs, the AMC-V7-2C6678 provides flexible connectivity to the backplane and front panel. Offering maximum flexibility and access to all DSPs on the card, the Gigabit Ethernet interface uses on-board switches.

The new AMC signal processing module also provides two TMS320C6678 fixed- and floating-point octal core DSPs from Texas Instruments, based on TI’s KeyStone multicore architecture. Running at 1.25GHz, the TI DSPs offer a combined performance of 320 GFLOPS and 640 GMACS. Featuring two fast 5Gbaud PCI Express links to connect the FPGA with each of the two DSPs, the new module delivers high DSP performance with 16 DSP cores and shared memory.

The AMC-V7-2C6678 features 2GB of high bandwidth DDR3-1333 SDRAM as standard for each DSP. An additional 512MB x 16 of DDR3-800 SDRAM and 1GB x 32 of DDR3-1250 SDRAM are provided for the FPGA. Featuring separate glue logic for board configuration and management, 256MB of flash memory is included to store multiple FPGA images and software. This facilitates control, FPGA configuration and flash reprogramming over the SRIO or SPI interfaces.

Available software includes a full MicroBlaze board support library for the FPGA, and full board support libraries for the DSPs. Additional debug support is provided via on-board serial port connectors, plus RS-232 and JTAG debug via the CommAgility AMC-BB Debug Breakout Board.

An IDT CPS-1848 Gen2 SRIO switch supports Serial RapidIO at up to 20Gbps per port. The board includes a single front panel SFP+ optical interface that links directly to the FPGA, plus a single mini-SAS connector linked to the SRIO switch as standard. Enabling the module to sync easily to other equipment, timing and synchronisation is achieved via the front panel or backplane clock I/O.

Suitable for use in both ATCA carriers and MicroTCA chassis, the new module is a compact full-size, single width PICMG AMC.0 R2.0 AMC. The AMC-V7-2C6678 can also operate standalone, with suitable power and cooling. Enabling the best technical and commercial fit to a customer application to be achieved, a range of build options is available with further customisation possible in volume.

The AMC-V7-2C6678 is available now. Please contact CommAgility for pricing