Xilinx Xperts

In recent years Plextek has gained a great deal of experience in using Xilinx FPGAs and CPLDs. This expertise has been recognised by Xilinx Inc. with Plextek gaining admission to the Xilinx Xpert Program as a Xilinx Worldwide 3rd Party Certified Design Service Centre.

As part of this program Plextek offers a number of services including; feasibility studies and design reviews, complete product design at chip, board or system level, or coding of individual modules.

For first time users of FPGAs one of the biggest difficulties is establishing up front the likely achievable performance of the FPGA in terms of clocking speed and device sizing requirements. This is an area where Plextek's accumulated expertise can be used to cross check an in-house design team's estimates or to provide the initial estimate itself.

There is considerable scope for tuning an HDL (eg VHDL or Verilog) design to the Xilinx FPGA architecture to achieve gross improvements in maximum clocking rate and silicon area requirements. This is particularly true for DSP and Error Coding functions but can also be true for general glue logic and bus interfacing. A factor of 2 or 3 reduction in area for filters is not uncommon. Reductions may be obtained simply by restructuring an algorithm or by changing RTL coding style. They also might be achieved by changes to the system architecture with the changes having no or negligible effect on the overall system performance. Plextek's intimate knowledge of Xilinx FPGA architectures can be used to help tune the overall system architecture to the target FPGAs capabilities or to help structure and style the RTL optimally.

It is often more convenient to encapsulate design requirements in terms of the functionality of a board or system. A Xilinx FPGA may form a key part of a solution but additional circuits will be required to make it complete. Plextek is well placed to undertake the task of designing a complete board or product due to its extensive system and DSP expertise, and its RF, analogue, digital, and software design capability.

The following is a non-exhaustive list of recent projects using Xilinx FPGAs and CPLDs:-

1. Modem card for a Broadband Wireless Access system
2. Signal processing card for an IFF transponder system
3. Controller for a Dental X-Ray Imager
4. Formula One car telemetry system
5. PCMCIA based GSM GPRS module
6. Radar Frequency Synthesiser card
7. Digitiser card for a 911 GSM Mobile Location system
8. ATM Switch and Physical Interface card

Plextek has extensive system, DSP, RF, analogue, digital, software, and project management experience. This allows a customer to select the service level that best fits their requirements.

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