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Avnet releases Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA evaluation and development kits
Phoenix, Ariz. — The Avnet Electronics Marketing operating group of Avnet, Inc. has released the Xilinx Spartan-6 LX16 FPGA Evaluation Kit and Spartan-6 LX150T FPGA Development Kit. Both kits support the new FMC expansion standard, which enables the addition of add-on modules and easy customization when working with field programmable gate array (FPGA) applications.
The Spartan-6 LX16 FPGA Evaluation Kit, based on the Spartan-6 LX16 FPGA, showcases a system-level approach to low-power design for the Spartan-6 family. The kit is designed for use as a general-purpose FPGA development board for low-power design, making it well-suited for portable instrumentation and battery-powered applications.
The board is powered by a lithium-ion battery (included), a USB cable connection, or a 12-volt adaptor, and is supported by six high-efficiency portable power management integrated circuits (ICs) from Texas Instruments. The new PSoC 3 programmable system-on-chip from Cypress adds 20-bit precision analog, system power management, USB/UART/SPI connectivity, LCD direct drive, CapSense touch sensing, and FPGA configuration support. The board provides a low-pin-count FMC expansion connector for adding FMC daughter cards.
The Spartan-6 LX16 FPGA Evaluation Kit sells for $225 and will be available for shipment later this year.
The Spartan-6 LX150T FPGA Development Kit is built for video, industrial networking and control, wireless communications, PCIe expansion, and general FPGA prototyping applications. Based on the Spartan-6 LX150T FPGA with its on-chip 2.5 Gbits/s transceivers, the kit provides an advanced platform for developing low-cost applications that require high-speed connectivity. The board features high-performance DDR3 memory, a 10/100/1G Ethernet interface, and two low-pin-count FMC expansion connectors. The kit sells for $995.
Avnet’s Spartan-6 LX16 FPGA and Spartan-6 LX150T FPGA kits complement existing development kits from Xilinx that make up the base platform of Xilinx’s new Targeted Design Platform strategy. This strategy includes base, domain and market-specific targeted design platforms that enable the creation and development of custom system solutions.
The two new kits from Avnet join the base platform to provide designers a standard development platform and software package for basic evaluation and development of general FPGA designs.
In the future, both companies will offer domain specific targeted technology that adds software and reference designs specific to embedded processing, DSP and connectivity.
Both kits will be featured during X-fest 2009 — Avnet and Xilinx’s 37-city global technical seminar series, which kicks off October 6 in San Jose, California.
Visit Avnet’s technical forums or OnDemand site for more product information and videos.
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