FPGA PMC COTS Hardware

Remora-PMC+ Reconfigurable Virtex-II FPGA PMC Mezzanine Card

BittWare offers a wide range of PMC format mezzanine cards for use with PCI, cPCI and VME format base boards including BittWare's own range of SHARC® and TigerSHARC® digital signal processing cards. The Barracuda-PMC+ and the Darter-PMC+ are industry-leading high-speed data acquisition solutions. PMC+ format mezzanine cards featuring SHARC® and TigerSHARC® DSP devices are also available for use with BittWare's digital signal processing host boards for the most demanding applications.

Flexible Application Design with Xilinx Virtex-II FPGA

BittWare's Remora-PMC+ is a reconfigurable FPGA PMC format board featuring the power of the Xilinx Virtex-II field programmable gate array. A PCI Mezzanine Card (PMC) providing BittWare's PMC+ I/O extensions, the Remora-PMC+ enables systems designers to add the flexibility of a reconfigurable FPGA to their PMC or PMC+ compatible host boards. Configurable for a wide range of applications, the Xilinx Virtex-II features up to 1 million system gates, a flexible digital I/O interface and reconfigurable computing blocks. The Remora-PMC+ also features a 64-Bit, 66MHz PCI interface and a 64 - 512MB bank of SDRAM.

Xilinx Virtex-II Reconfigurable FPGA

The Virtex-II reconfigurable FPGA from Xilinx is a powerful solution for custom digital interfaces based on IP cores and customised modules. The Remora-PMC+ features a flexible digital I/O interface that provides up to9 68 front panel primary user I/O pins each of which is individually configurable for any of nineteen single-ended I/O standards and six differential I/O standards including LVDS, SSTL, HSTL II and GTL+. Any two I/O pins can be used as a differential pair providing maximum board layout flexibility.

The virtex-II also provides 38 secondary user I/O pins which are available on two optional connectors. The Virtex-II is configured on power-up by the host or an on-board EPROM and supports reconfiguration "on-the-fly" from either the host or the DSPs on the host card.

SharcFIN ASIC 64-Bit, 66MHz PCI Bus Interface

BittWare's SharcFIN® ASIC provides a full 64-Bit, 66MHz bus mastering PCI interface and an SDRAM controller to interface the SDRAM and the Virtex-II to the PCI host. The SharcFIN interfaces to the PCI bus at 64-Bits, 66MHz for 528MB/s burst throughput and provides both bus mastering DMA capability and slave access to the SDRAM and Virtex-II.

I/O Interface Options

The Virtex-II can send and receive data via the SharcFIN which provides the 64/66 PCI interface or via a high density 68-pin I/O connector on the front panel. The Xilinx virtex-II also supports four link ports connected to the host board allowing high-speed direct data flow between the Virtex-II and DSPs on the host board. A local parallel bus gives the Virtex-II high-speed access to the SDRAM, the SharcFIN and the host board. In addition to the 68-pin front panel I/O connector, two optional digital I/O connectors are available to provide an additional 38 bits of digital I/O to the Virtex-II.

PMC+ Interface

The Remora-PMC+ is fully compatible with any PMC capable base board. When attached to one of Bittware's PMC+ base boards it also supports BittWare's PMC+ extensions which include four link ports directly to the Virtex-II FPGA. The PMC+ link ports are configurable for BittWare's Tiger (ADSP-TS101 / ADSP-TS201) or Hammerhead (ADSP-2116x) base boards and are an ideal way to move high-speed data directly to the DSPs.

Software Development Tools

BittWare offers an FPGA developer's kit and a host interface library that allows designers to easily develop code and integrate the Remora-PMC+ into their systems. Xilinx also provides a complete suite of development tools for the Virtex-II FPGA. Please note that the end-user is responsible for generating, assembling and debugging all application-specific FPGA design for the Virtex-II; however, custom FPGA design is available from BittWare.

For more details of any BittWare PMC+ product, please contact Sarsen Technology on +44 1672 511166 or visit the BittWare web site: BittWare Inc.