Xilinx Announces Immediate Availability of Virtex-4 FX Based Development Platform

High Performance FX60 FPGA With Dual Embedded IBM PowerPC Processors Provides Powerful Embedded System Development Platform

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Jan. 22, 2007 -- Xilinx today announced immediate availability of its lead-free, RoHS compliant ML410 development platform. Based on the Virtex(TM)-4 FX60 FPGA, the ML410 provides designers with a high performance logic fabric, two embedded PowerPC® 405 processors and a considerable quantity of high-speed serial I/O with integrated transceivers. When paired with the Xilinx Embedded Development Kit (EDK) and extensive catalog of IP peripherals, the ML410 platform provides a comprehensive embedded development system that enables rapid prototyping and verification of embedded system designs.

Offered as an ATX form-factor motherboard, the development platform includes a 256 MB DDR-II DIMM memory, a 64 MB DDR component memory, PCI® Express and PCI 32/33 expansion connectors, two 10/100/1000 Ethernet PHYs, and interface ports for USB, Serial ATA, PS/2 keyboard/mouse, and RS-232.

Development Platform for Streaming Data Applications

With individual DDR-II and DDR memories on board, the ML410 provides an ideal development platform for prototyping and verifying high throughput data intensive applications. An embedded system designer can create high performance platforms as required by many communications, medical imaging and streaming video applications by building systems using either the Xilinx XPS EDK-based memory controllers or the configurable Multi-Ported Memory Controller (MPMC2). The MPMC2, available as a free downloadable reference design, has integrated DMA, allows point to point connections, and can be integrated with EDK IP cores. Visit www.xilinx.com/esp/wired/optical/xlnx_net/mpmc.htm for more information.

"By using the ML410 evaluation board from Xilinx, and leveraging the MPMC2/DDR2 RDIMM and TEMAC reference design, we were able to accelerate the design, debug and troubleshoot steps for our PPC405 embedded system implemented on Xilinx Virtex-4 FX100 FPGA platform," stated Dr. XiaoLei Guo, principal development engineer, C-COR Incorporated. C-COR is a leading provider of advanced video, voice and data transport technology along with sophisticated software systems for the monitoring and management needed to deploy and support everything from basic video to Internet telephony, video-on-demand, and switched-digital-broadcast.

Designed for Flexibility

Leveraging both integrated PowerPC 405 cores in the Virtex-4 FX60 FPGA, the ML410 is architected to allow two independent processing systems on a single platform. This capability is exemplified by an FPGA design created with dual independent processor sub-systems, each running the VxWorks and using independent Ethernet channels that operate at 10/100 or 1000 megabits per second. Expansion connectors provide further customization. Using the connectors to interface a custom designed daughter card, an additional eight transceivers and multiple LVDS pairs can be accessed.

Enabling High Performance Embedded System Development

According to the May 2006 Embedded Market Forecasters Survey of Embedded Developers, respondents overwhelmingly selected Xilinx as the FPGA vendor with which they were most familiar, currently using products from, shipping a product with, and planning to use in their next embedded design.

Availability

The ML410 development platform includes a comprehensive library of documentation, reference designs, tutorials, source code, board schematics, and more. The ML410 is available for immediate delivery at $2995. Orders can be placed through Xilinx distributors or direct on the Xilinx website at www.xilinx.com/ml410 . A 19-inch 1U Rack-Mount Chassis is available for an additional $449. Intended to be installed into a 4-post network rack for remote use, the rack-mount chassis can be used to set up a farm of ML410s for regression testing or for creating a networked computing cluster. For more details on the chassis visit www.xilinx.com/ml410

About Xilinx Virtex-4 FX FPGAs

A finalist in the 2005 EE Times ACE awards competition, the Virtex-4 FX Platform features the industry's only dual 32-bit embedded PowerPC processors running at up to 450 MHz and delivering over 700 Dhrystone MIPS each, while providing a three-fold performance advantage over processors in competing FPGAs.

About Xilinx

Xilinx, Inc. is the worldwide leader of programmable logic solutions. For more information, visit www.xilinx.com .