Date: 07/12/2010

Update on the kits and boards for FPGA based DSP board design and development

Programmable Silicon leader Xilinx has announced the availability of FPGA based DSP development kit based on its popular FPGA chips Virtex-6 and Spartan-6 families. The leading technology distributor Avnet had announced the Virtex-6 FPGA DSP Development Kit in early 2010. Avnet has successfully marketed Virtex-6 FPGA DSP kit and was also selected as editor's choice product by Military Embedded Systems (MES) magazine.

The notable advantage of Virtex-6 based kit is it offers a separate ADC/DAC card to feed in and collect high-frequency analog data from the external world. The ADC and DAC are from Texas Instruments, one of the leading vendor of high performance data converters and also is expertise in tailoring its ADC and DAC for DSP applications since TI also is number one vendor of standard DSP processor chips.
FPGA Mezzanine Card, which holds the ADC and DAC chips is designed by 4DSP to offer best configuration and control capability from base FPGA board. User can optimize signal-to-noise ratio loss points, quantization, analog filtering and gain. Xilinx says the integration of ADC/DAC technology with Virtex-6 devices can save weeks or months of development time.

MathWorks is also collaborating with Xilinx in offering support to embedded system developers using this kit through its MATLAB and Simulink design software tools.

These kits have integrated AMBA4 AXI4 interconnect and IP support and are provided with design resources such as programming tools and reference designs. AXI4 interconnect eases integration of Xilinx and third party IPs.

In the military/aerospace and medical electronic equipments where the video signal or such high bandwidth signal processing is involved, FPGA scores high preference compared to ASIC DSP chips. These kits are the right tools to develop application for these said applications faster.

Spartan-6 LX150T device FPGA DSP Development kit is for the developers who want to begin exploring the power of FPGA as hardware as well as software programmable DSP. The design resources support the code either RTL, (Model-Based Design with MATLAB and Simulink) or high-level "C" synthesis to accelerate development.

Xilinx is also offering the Spartan-6 FPGA Co-Processing DSP Kit, which optimizes the key strengths of high performance FPGAs, system control processing and digital signal processing in one integrated platform.

The Spartan-6 FPGA is suggested as ideal for off-loading or "Co-processing" ultra high performance digital signal processing or providing flexible peripheral expansion options.
Virtex-6 FPGA DSP kit is priced at $3,995. The Spartan-6 FPGA DSP kit is priced at $1,995. The Spartan-6 FPGA Co-Processing kit is available for order entry for $1,695.
To learn more about Xilinx DSP solutions visit, http://www.xilinx.com/technology/dsp.htm

The 2nd biggest FPGA vendor also doesn't disappoint when looking for DSP specific kit based on its FPGA chips. FPGA DSP Development Kit from Altera based on Stratix II includes the Stratix II DSP development board, DSP Builder development tool, Quartus II development software, MATLAB/Simulink evaluation software, evaluation intellectual property (IP) cores, system reference designs and labs.
To know more on Altera's DSP boards visit http://www.altera.com/products/devkits/dsp-index.jsp
Here you can found atleast 30+ FPGA boards and kits data related to DSP.