News Briefs - Hardware:

Virtex-II Modules Boost Performance On VMEbus, PCI Boards

The BenDATA-II is the latest high performance-density DIME-II processing module from Nallatech, Inc. and brings additional processing capability and flexibility to the company's DIME- II range of PCI, PC/104, cPCI and VME system motherboards.

The BenDATA-II module combines the latest and highest density Virtex-II Pro FPGA (field programmable gate array) from Xilinx, with the flexibility of both on-board SRAM and DDR SDRAM. High bandwidth off-module communication is provided through the multi-Gbit/sec bandwidth of the DIME-II motherboard connections in addition to eight Rocket I/O connections. This combination of features on a single module provides developers with an extremely powerful and flexible platform for the implementation of high-performance FPGA computing applications.

The Virtex-II Pro FPGA on the BenDATA-II is offered from 2VP70 to 2VP125. As well as providing a sizable programmable logic resource, a key feature of these devices is the high availability embedded multipliers and Block RAM (BRAM) -- offering on average 4X of each, compared to equivalent Virtex-II FPGAs. 16Mbytes ZBT SRAM is provided for high-speed random access, while 0.5GBytes DDR SDRAM offers increased depth for high-speed burst access.

Developing applications for the BenDATA-II is simplified, through the product features and supporting infrastructure. All Nallatech products support multiple FPGA design flows, including HDL, Xilinx System Generator and Handel- C, along with other high-level environments. Industry standard synthesis and implementation tools, including Xilinx ISE are also supported. Optimised controller cores and reference designs are provided for ZBT SRAM and DDR SDRAM memory, making interfacing to these simple. The BenDATA-II is supported in the Nallatech DIMEtalk connectivity tool, for the easy implementation of system communications.

Advanced software support and hardware compatibility eases integration into existing systems. Support for industry standard form factors and interfaces including PCI, PC/104, cPCI and VME ensures easy communication and integration with existing systems. The BenDATA-II can be hosted using appropriate motherboards in Windows, Linux and VxWorks systems running FUSE. Standard software development environments are supported through FUSE APIs for Java, C++ and MATLAB.