Xilinx launches connectivity and embedded design kits

The kits are intended to help developers to focus on innovation and differentiation when designing with fpgas. Kits will be available for connectivity and embedded applications. "Each of the new kits provides a validated starting point designers can use to bring their products to market quickly while, at the same time, including the tools they need to ensure their time is focused on innovation," said Brent Przybus, Xilinx' director of platform marketing. He added that the Targeted Design strategy appears to be working. "We've seen an increase in kit sales of more than 500% compared with previous generation products. But where previous kits addressed base platform issues, these kits focus on the expertise needed to do vertical design." The kits support development of designs based either on Xilinx' Virtex-6 or Spartan-6 fpga ranges. The connectivity development kits contain Targeted Reference Designs that combine hard blocks within the fpga with Xilinx connectivity IP and third party IP from Northwest Logic. Customers can choose fully compliant PCIe gen 1 or gen 2 x1, x2, or x4 in the Virtex-6 kit, while the Spartan-6 kit enables designers to link fully compliant PCIe gen 1 with gigabit Ethernet. The embedded kits enable software development to start immediately using the included Xilinx SDK environment. They can run and modify example code using a fully implemented MicroBlaze 32bit risc soft processor core and a set of common processor peripherals. Meanwhile, a dsp development kit created in association with Avnet will be available early in 2010. The kit will allow algorithm and hardware developers to evaluate performance and implementation styles of common dsp elements that can be used as building blocks in an end application.