30 Sep

4DSP’s FM788 Chosen by VITA as Featured Product

4DSP FM788 is VITA Editors Choice

One of 4DSP’s newest products, the FM788, is featured in the Fall 2014 issue of OpenSystems Media’s VITA Technologies as a Primetime Choices product (see page 23 of the PDF version here.) Some of the other topics covered in this issue of the magazine include reliability prediction methods, interoperability of VITA 46.11, and chassis management for VPX systems.

With eight 16-bit A/D channels running up to 250Msps, the FM788 is an FPGA-based XMC module based on Xilinx’s Virtex-7. It offers unmatched performance for such applications as beamforming, direction finding, RADAR, and satellite communications. The FM788 has the largest channel count in this frequency range and the most available onboard memory for real-time buffering of large data vectors. The four 10Gbps optical transceivers on this module can be connected directly to remote storage with no CPU involvement.

4DSP CTO Pierrick Vulliez had this to say about the FM788, “This approach of offering a way to digitize multiple analog channels, perform signal processing using the Virtex-7 and offload data to a storage system using optical connections on a single card overcomes the inherent limitations of bussed architectures.”

4DSP continues to push the envelope by providing more cutting-edge products in the FMC and FPGA form factors. We recently announced the release of the FMC144 A/D-D/A module along with two variants, the FMC140 and FMC142. With four 16-bit A/D channels with speeds up to 370MSPS and four 16-bit D/A channels up to 2.5GSPS, the FMC144 delivers high-bandwidth connectivity for calculation-heavy FPGA-based applications including beamforming and direction finding. It is very well-suited for multi-antenna arrays used in the telecommunications industry where high performance is required.

More new FMC products are planned for release before the year is out. We will share details as they become available.

26 Sep

New White Paper, Video and Improvements for StellarIP

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We recently announced some of the numerous updates and improvements that have been made to StellarIP this year to expand its feature set and make it more user-friendly for firmware designers. Today, we direct you to a new white paper that expands on the benefits of our FPGA firmware design tool.

4DSP is constantly working to improve StellarIP to help customers easily implement their designs and quickly get the most out of their hardware. Since its introduction in 2011, a growing number of clients have leveraged the library of proven firmware at the core of StellarIP to more efficiently achieve their design goals. This intuitive tool has also been essential for boosting productivity here at 4DSP, where our engineers have used it to create hundreds of FPGA reference designs for different platforms. These designs have, of course, been passed along to our customers.

Most notable among the improvements made in 2014 are the significant enhancements to the graphical interface, which simplifies editing. Design integrity protection has also been improved to help minimize mistakes and save time. Another key addition is support for Microsoft Windows 8.1, and StellarIP now also has the ability to automatically download updates, which allows 4DSP to deliver the latest features, improvements, and bug fixes directly to users as they become available.

Furthermore, as FPGA industry leader Xilinx prepares to switch to Vivado Design Suite for all of its future FPGA products, 4DSP has added Vivado support to StellarIP. This is important for users because it allows them to regenerate old ISE designs for Vivado for compatible FPGA cards. More improvements are in the works for StellarIP, including plans to streamline the process of firmware updates, add support for VHDL generics, and implement an automated assistant to guide users in the creation of stars (the StellarIP term for IP blocks). Be sure to install the latest version of the tool to ensure that you have timely access to upcoming features.

Selected Updates and Improvements in 2014:

• Improved graphical interface
• Improved library and design integrity protection
• Library merging
• Local library support
• Search in library view to speed up library editing
• More pre-generate checks and better error and warning messages
• Improved log output window (including Xilinx shell outputs redirected to StellarIP)
• File type registration and double-click support from Windows Explorer
• Text file editor
• More custom configuration settings
• Automatic version updates
• Help files
• Xilinx ISE and Vivado support
• Windows 8.1 support

More information, including a new tutorial video, can be found at:

http://www.4dsp.com/software_stellar.php

StellarIP can be used with 4DSP hardware or any third-party FPGA platform under licensing. It is included as part of the Board Support Package (BSP) which is provided for free with the purchase of 4DSP’s FPGA and FMC products.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have additional questions.