Date: 03/08/2010

GE to release digital receivers and trancievers based on Xilinx' FPGAs

GE Intelligent Platforms said it will soon launch a range of digital receiver, digital transceiver and FPGA based products based on the Virtex-6 FPGA family from Xilinx. It has planned that these will be followed by new products based on Xilinx's 7 series devices including the Virtex-7 family. These new products are suitable for processing applications such as software defined radio, signals intelligence, tactical communications and radar.

GE Intelligent Platforms has concurrently announced an 'early adopter program' to allow companies and organizations to obtain early access to and information about (under Non-Disclosure Agreement) the company's plans for these new products.

"FPGA technology is at the heart of the most demanding military applications, and customers continue to push its boundaries," said Jon Jones, Technology Leader, Sensor Processing at GE Intelligent Platforms. "They are looking for more raw processing performance, greater capacity, higher speed I/O and lower power consumption - and these latest-generation devices from Xilinx will allow us to respond to those requirements. Combining advanced FPGA technology with GE's expertise in developing compelling sensor processing solutions will allow those customers to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage."

GE says that the Virtex-6 FPGA is designed to consume up to 50% less power and therefore dissipate less heat than its predecessors, making it ideal for the increasingly confined, mobile nature of military deployments in which size, weight, power and cooling are highly constrained. This FPGA uses Xilinx ExpressFabric technology, a 600 MHz clocking technology and performance-tuned IP blocks supporting DSP, transceiver and other functions. This technology offers up to twice the performance of its predecessors.

The Virtex-7 family is fabricated using a 28nm high-performance/low-power manufacturing process, allowing it to consume 50% less power compared to the Virtex-6 family while delivering high performance.

Both device families offer users greater programming capacity and the higher frequency I/O that allows support of the latest high speed serial interfaces including up to Gen3 PCI Express. The ISE Design Suite development tool set available from Xilinx allows improved reliability in design simulation and synthesis.

For more information visit: www.ge-ip.com/products/family/sensor-processing