SAN JOSE, Calif., July 7, 1999—Xilinx (NASDAQ:XLNX) and two AllianceCORE partners today announced the immediate availability of the industry's fastest SDRAM interface cores for programmable logic devices.

The cores were developed by Rapid Prototypes of Stateline, Nevada, (www.FPGA.com) and NMI Electronics of West Midlands, UK, (www.nmi.co.uk). The cores have been tested and proved to operate at up to 200 MHz in the Xilinx Virtex FPGAs, and up to 125 MHz in the Xilinx XC9500XL CPLDs. The cores also support the XC4000 FPGA families.

Rapid Prototypes, a new Xilinx AllianceCORE partner, is now shipping an SDRAM controller core that supports Virtex, XC4000XL and XC4000XLA FPGAs. The core supports a 32-bit data path. It provides up to 200 MHz performance in both XC4000XLA and Virtex devices, yielding a data throughput of 6.4 Gbits per second.

“The features in the Xilinx FPGA architectures, such as the Virtex DLL, and the low-skew global resources in the XC4000 FPGAs, allow us to realize performance levels that have not been achievable in any competing programmable logic architecture,” said Brian Von Herzen, president of Rapid Prototypes. “We have been able to actually prove 200 MHz performance in the FPGA using our FastRAM demo board that is available for customer evaluation.”

The core can interface to both SDRAM and SGRAM devices. It supports such applications as digital video, real-time image processing, high performance reconfigurable computing and digital neural networks. The core is available in a Xilinx netlist format, optimized for each FPGA family.

Broad Device Support

NMI Electronics is shipping a new SDRAM controller core that supports a wide range of Xilinx device families, including the XC9500XL CPLDs and the Virtex, XC4000XL and XC4000XLA FPGAs. The core has been highly optimized for the Xilinx architecture. A Virtex implementation can take less than 5 percent of the XCV50 FPGA, the smallest device in the Virtex family.

"The features contained within the Virtex FPGAs are incredible," said Neil Thompson, Hardware Group Manager at NMI Electronics. “The densities allow true system-level integration while the programmable SelectI/O interface provides the ability to connect to a wide variety of external high-speed memory. In addition, improvements in the Xilinx place and route software made it easy to increase the performance of our original core across all of the Xilinx device architectures.”

The NMI controller has a VHDL-generic-based configurable SDRAM interface which supports most common SDRAM operating modes. It is designed with a synchronous, CPU-compatible interface that can be modified to fit the user application. The core architecture is designed to support embedded applications in industrial and telecommunications systems and high-performance peripherals such as printers. It is available as VHDL source code optimized for Xilinx programmable logic.

Versions of both the NMI and Rapid Prototypes cores for Virtex devices utilize the on-chip DLL that eases high-performance design by simplifying the clocking scheme and eliminating skew.

"Rapid Prototypes and NMI have developed popular cores with unprecedented performance levels," said Babak Hedayati, core solutions programs director at Xilinx. "These companies offer our customers optimized products and services at attractive price levels."

Xilinx Reference Designs

In addition to the cores from the AllianceCORE partners, Xilinx is offering a 125 MHz SDRAM controller reference design specifically for Virtex FPGAs. This design is available in synthesizable Verilog formats. The reference design offers a starting point for customers who want to do their own designs. However, it does not include the full technical support that comes with the products from the AllianceCORE partners. 

Availability

The reference design can be downloaded for free from the Xilinx IP Center, a comprehensive web-based resource for programmable logic-based IP cores, tools, information and third party services. The IP center can be accessed via the worldwide web at www.xilinx.com/ipcenter.
All of the cores are available today directly from the partners. List prices for the cores from Rapid Prototypes and NMI Electronics begin at $1,995 and $4,800, respectively. Information on Rapid Prototypes, NMI Electronics and these new cores is also available at the Xilinx IP Center on the Xilinx Web site.

Xilinx is the leading innovator of complete programmable logic solutions, including advanced integrated circuits, software design tools, predefined system functions delivered as cores, and unparalleled field engineering support. Founded in 1984 and headquartered in San Jose, Calif., Xilinx invented the field programmable gate array (FPGA) and commands more than half of the world market for these devices today. Xilinx solutions enable customers to reduce significantly the time required to develop products for the computer, peripheral, telecommunications, networking, industrial control, instrumentation, high-reliability/military, and consumer markets. For more information, visit the Xilinx web site at www.xilinx.com.

Xilinx is a registered trademark. All XC-prefix product designations, AllianceCORE, SelectI/O and Virtex are trademarks of Xilinx, Inc. Other brands or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
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