PRO DESIGN Unveils Affordable Virtex 7 Based FPGA Module for Multi FPGA Prototyping

Munich, 27 May 2013 – PRO DESIGN, veteran in the EMS and EDA industry, today announced the launch of its "proFPGA V7 Mini FPGA Module", a very cost efficient FPGA module offering highest interface performance, for its successful and innovative product family of FPGA based prototyping solutions.

The proFPGA product series, released in December last year, is one of the most modular and flexible systems on the market, consisting of a motherboard, different kinds of FPGA modules with the latest Virtex 7 technology, a set of interconnection boards/cables, various daughter boards and an extensive software environment. It addresses customers who need a flexible and high performance FPGA based prototyping solution for SoC design prototyping, real time system integration and pre silicon software development to reduce the time to market.

The new proFPGA V7 Mini FPGA Module is an additional option in the proFPGA product family. The user can choose, according to his needs, between various V7 Mini FPGA Modules, assembled with different Xilinx Virtex 7 FPGA devices like the XC7VX330T, the XC7VX485T, the XC7V585T or the XC7VX690T which vary widely in capacity, number and performance of high speed serial transceivers and especially price.

A single module offers a capacity of up to 4.2 million ASIC gates and up to 4 modules can easily be plugged on the proFPGA motherboard. The FPGA modules can also be used simply in combination with the already available proFPGA V7 XC7V2000T FPGA module, daughter cards, cables, proFPGA accessories and software.

"We are amazed by the success we have achieved with our proFPGA product line so far. We released the product just the end of last year and were already able to win 4 of the top 10 semiconductor vendors with a brand new product within 6 months. This confirms that the customers accept and like our highly modular system concept, which offers a great degree of flexibility while still providing the high system performance. The proFPGA V7 Mini FPGA Module is our next step to extend our product portfolio so that even more users can benefit from our proFPGA solution for further applications", said Gunnar Scholl, CEO of PRO DESIGN.

The proFPGA V7 Mini FPGA module offers, with its 8 extension sites, up to 774 free accessible user IOs, which gives maximum freedom regarding the FPGA interconnection structure for connecting proFPGA daughter boards or user specific extension boards like DDR3 memory, USB 3.0, and DVI to build a prototype in the most efficient and fastest way. One highlight and distinguishing feature of the proFPGA V7 Mini Module is, beside the very attractive price, the availability of further serial high speed transceivers of the Xilinx Virtex 7 FPGAs. The FPGAs used offer up to 36 Mega Gigabit Transceivers (MGTs), which can be used to verify and test high-speed interfaces like PCIe Gen3 with a superb performance of up to of 13.1 Gb/s data transfer rate.

"Over the last months we've got a lot of positive feedback regarding our proFPGA solution, but a lot of customers asked for more variants of FPGA modules - for some customers or applications our existing proFPGA V7 FPGA Module was simply too big in capacity or didn't offer the required interface performance of the MGTs. In order to address these applications, as well as customers like universities or start-up companies with lower budgets, we decided to design the proFPGA V7 Mini FPGA Module, which offers, in combination with the proFPGA motherboard, daughterboards and software environment, a complete, powerful and highly flexible FPGA based prototyping solution for an affordable price with highest interface performance," stated Heiko Mauersberger, CTO of PRO DESIGN.

Demonstration

PRO DESIGN will demonstrate the proFPGA V7 Mini FPGA Module and FPGA based Prototyping solution at the DAC show in Austin at booth #715, June 3 – 5, 2013.

Availability

The proFPGA Mini V7 FPGA Module is available for early adopter customers in June 2013. and general availability will be in July 2013.

About ProDesign

The privately held company was founded in 1982 and has around 90 employees, with various facilities in Germany and France. PRO DESIGN has more than 30 years of experience as provider in the E²MS market and has built extensive knowledge in the areas of electrical engineering, FPGA design, PCB design, construction, production, assembly, measuring and testing - decades of experience that customers can benefit from.