FPGA analog I/O XMC for defense and aerospace applications introduced by Curtiss-Wright

HIGH WYCOMBE, England, 1 May 2013.Curtiss-Wright Controls Defense Solutions in High Wycombe, England, is introducing the XF07-518 analog I/O Express Mezzanine Card (XMC) based on the Xilinx Kintex-7 field-programmable gate array (FPGA) for high-end defense and aerospace embedded computing applications.

The 500-megasamples-per-second, 14-bit XF07-518 provides system integrators with a high-performance analog I/O module for applications that require high bandwidth. The XF07-518 delivers rugged embedded 14-bit A/D converter technology with an FPGA to process and communicate processed data.

The XF07-518 is a high speed quad-channel 500-megasamples-per-second analog input XMC (ANSI/VITA 42) mezzanine card. It has an onboard user-programmable Xilinx Kintex XC7K325T FPGA for combining data acquisition and user algorithms. With its four channels of direct high-speed analog I/O and next-generation FPGA processing the XF07-518 is for radar and image processing in military and commercial applications.

The XF07-518 supports two banks of 128Mx16-bit DDR3 SDRAM, each directly connected to the FPGA. Each memory bank supports read or write bandwidths faster than 2 gigabytes per second, Curtiss-Wright officials say.

The XF07-518 supports an x4/x8 PCI Express channel through the primary XMC P15 connector using the FPGA's built-in PCI Express end-point block. Alternatively, with customer hardware description language (HDL) development, the XMC P15 can provide user defined protocol support over the data links, such as Aurora, for higher bandwidth and lower latency operation.

Curtiss-Wright's FusionXF development kit includes software, HDL, and utilities with examples for using the XF07-518. FusionXF includes a C programming language API, driver framework and sophisticated DMA support. One of the core elements to the FusionXF development kit is a framework for adding in IP functionality or capabilities to the FPGA easily and effectively. FusionXF allows user applications to be associated standard drivers, thereby speeding up application development.

Software utilities are provided for configuring the FPGA. These include FLASH programming and configuring the FPGA from one of several indexed images in stored in FLASH.

FusionXF supports VxWorks and Linux Fedora and operating systems. Additional operating systems, such as Windows, or other distributions can be considered on request.

A range of environmental requirements are addressed by the XF07-518 including commercial, air-cooled rugged and conduction-cooled.

For more information contact Curtiss-Wright Controls Defense Solutions online at www.cwcdefense.com.