Products

One of my most common customer requests is to speed up execution of a software application using FPGA hardware acceleration. If the application runs on a PC or server, you can achieve impressive performance gains by using off-the-shelf FPGA development boards for PCI Express. Here is a comparison of the available 7 Series FPGA boards for PCI Express applications: AC701 Artix-7 KC705 Kintex-7 VC707 Virtex-7 VC709 Virtex-7 $1295 $1695 $3495 $4995 XC7A200T-2FBG676C XC7K325T-2FFG900C XC7VX485T-2FFG1761 XC7VX690T-2FFG1761C 4-lane Gen2 PCIe 8-lane Gen2 PCIe 8-lane Gen2 PCIe 8-lane Gen3 PCIe 1GB DDR3 SODIMM 1GB DDR3 SODIMM 1GB DDR3 SODIMM 4GB DDR3 SODIMM x2 8Kb EEPROM 8Kb EEPROM 8Kb EEPROM 1KB EEPROM No BPI Flash 128MB BPI Flash 128MB BPI Flash 32MB BPI Flash 32MB Quad SPI 16MB Quad SPI 16MB Quad SPI No Quad SPI Flash SD Card slot SD Card slot SD Card slot No SD No LPC FMC 1x LPC FMC No LPC FMC No LPC FMC 1x HPC FMC (*) 1x HPC FMC (*) 2 x HPC FMC 1x HPC FMC (*) 1x SFP 1x SFP+ 1x SFP+ 4x SFP/SFP+ 1GB Ethernet 1GB Ethernet 1Gb Ethernet No Ethernet No USB No USB No USB No USB UART over USB UART over USB UART over USB UART over USB HDMI out HDMI out HDMI out No Video XADC header XADC header AMS port No Analog (*) Note: These HPC FMC connectors are only partially populated which means that they wont be able to support all standard FMCs. [Read More]

If you’re interested in testing out the Zynq-7000 SoC from Xilinx there are now quite a few options available, so it comes down to a question of features vs price. Below I’ve listed the most important features of the available boards side-by-side to help you make the right decision for yourself or your company. I’ll also go into what I think of each board before we look at the boards in terms of their popularity. [Read More]

I just received the Zynq-7000 based ZC706 development board from a new client and I’m pretty excited to start working on it. This is the first time that I’ll be working on the Zynq FPGA, part of the latest series 7 devices from Xilinx, so over the next few days, I’ll be writing about my experiences while getting familiar with the board, the FPGA and version 14.5 of the Xilinx development tools. [Read More]

Forget about the ML505. The ML605 just made it obsolete. Not because of the Virtex-6 or the 8-lane PCIe or the DDR3… You need the ML605 because it has two FMC expansion connectors, one high-pin count and one low-pin count. You could do practically anything with this board. Why do I like it? Because for once we have a board that lets you interface real data at a high throughput to a beast of an FPGA. [Read More]

Hardware Details The Xilinx University Program Virtex-II Pro (XUPV2P) Development System from Digilent is a development board for the Virtex-II Pro FPGA. It contains many useful hardware features including: Xilinx Virtex-II Pro XC2VP30 FPGA 10/100Mbps Ethernet PHY USB port Compact Flash card slot XSGA Video port Audio Codec SATA connectors (2 hosts, 1 target) PS/2 and RS-232 ports High and Low Speed expansion connectors  Virtex-II Pro FPGA Details [Read More]

Hardware Details The ML505 Evaluation Platform from Xilinx is a development board for the Virtex-5 FPGA. It contains many useful hardware features including: Xilinx Virtex-5 XC5VLX50T FPGA 10/100/1000 tri-speed Ethernet PHY USB host and peripheral controllers Programmable system clock generator Stereo AC97 codec with line in, line out, headphone, microphone, and SPDIF digital audio jacks PS/2 (2) – Keyboard, Mouse RS-232 port 16x2 character LCD Video Input Video (DVI/VGA) Output DIP Switch (8), LEDs (8), and Pushbuttons (5) PCI Express® Edge Connector (x1 Endpoint) SFP (1000Base-X) [Read More]

Below are several frequently asked questions about the ML505/6/7 and XUPV5 boards. Click on the question to jump to the answer. If you have a question about the ML505/6/7 or XUPV5 boards, please contact us at the email address given at the end of this page. What is the speed grade of Virtex-5 on my ML505/ML506/ML507/XUPV5 board? What are the differences between the ML505/6/7 and XUPV5 boards? What is the XUPV5 (ML509) board? [Read More]