FPGAs

An Xilinx Virtex-7 FPGA processing engine has been released by Interface Concept, in partnership with Deustsches Elektronen-Synchotron Research Centre (DESY). The MTCA.4 IC-FEP-TCAa, which features 36 Serdes transceivers, is particularly suitable for demanding digital signal processing applications.

Providing immediate support for the hardened floating point DSP blocks integrated in Arria 10 FPGAs and SoCs, Altera has released version 14.1 of its Quartus II software. Three unique DSP design entry flows enables users to achieve up to an industry-leading 1.5TFLOPS of DSP performance. The software also includes optimisations to improve designer productivity by accelerating Arria 10 FPGA and SoC design time.

The completion of nine NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) CAVP (Cryptographic Algorithm Validation Program) certifications has been announced by Microsemi. These certifications validate the high levels of security offered by the company’s SmartFusion2 SoC FPGAs and IGLOO2 FPGAs.

Targeting the growing IoT category of devices, Lattice Semiconductor has announced the availability of human voice detection and command recognition IP for smartphones and other portable devices. Implemented in the iCE40 family of mobile FPGAs, the IPs enable manufacturers to improve the user experience of their mobile devices with voice activation capabilities and maximise battery life by minimising false wake-up triggers to the processor.

To develop networking hardware and a Fibre Channel IP core, Microsemi has partnered with New Wave Design & Verification (New Wave DV). Featuring Microsemi’s SmartFusion2 SoC FPGAs and IGLOO2 FPGAs, the PMC/XMC card and Fibre Channel IP Core enable faster development cycles for defence, aerospace, enterprise networking and storage applications which utilise Ethernet and/or Fibre Channel. 

Barco Silex announces that Dialog Semiconductor has successfully integrated the Barco Silex BA431 IP core into its short range wireless communication ASIC. The core is a FIPS-140-2-certified Deterministic Random Bit Generator (DRBG) combined with a True Random Number Generator (TRNG), designed to enable secure cryptography.

A multichannel, high speed data converter FMC has been released by Pentek, expanding its Flexor line of FMC modules. Featuring eight 250MHz 16-bit ADCs, the Flexor Model 3316 doubles the existing channel density and boosts sample rates. Eight analogue HF or IF inputs are accepted by the front end, and transformer coupled with four Texas Instruments ADS42LB69 dual ADCs.

Sally Ward-Foxton investigates how more advanced process nodes are enabling performance enhancements in the latest-gen FPGA products.

Altera will demonstrate industrial solutions based on its FPGAs and SoCs at the SPS IPC Drives conference in Nuremberg, Germany, from 25th to 27th November, showing how industrial systems designers can use the devices to reduce cost and time-to-market for factory automation system designs. Altera’s stand (Hall 3, Stand 270) will feature a variety of solutions enabled by Altera Cyclone V and MAX 10 devices.

M/A-COM Technology has announced that Altera’s Stratix V FPGAs are interoperable with MACOM’s 12G-SDI chipset, enabling systems designers to create offerings that support 4k60p video. The solution supports the proposed SMTPE 12G-SDI standard for increasing video throughput by a factor of four over previous connectivity standards, and enables processing on a single card.