Xilinx now shipping Spartan-3A DSP FPGAs in production

Xilinx has announced the availability of production qualified Spartan-3A DSP-focused FPGAs. Shipping in production a month ahead of schedule, the Spartan-3A DSP platform offers 20 GMACs for under $30 for a wide range of low cost, data intensive applications including wireless, video surveillance, personal medical and consumer applications. The Spartan-3A DSP platform is part of the Xilinx XtremeDSP solutions that provide developers with a complete portfolio of programmable logic devices, IP, development tools and third party DSP ecosystem.

The Spartan-3A DSP platform gives developers the opportunity to leverage the flexibility and inherent parallel processing capabilities of FPGAs in low cost and mobile applications. The platform is based on Xilinx's well-established Spartan-3 generation FPGAs, with the added power management and connectivity features of the Spartan-3A platform. At the heart of the Spartan-3A DSP architecture is the XtremeDSP DSP48A slice that enables designers to implement many independent arithmetic functions.

"By taking advantage of the proven Spartan-3A FPGA fabric, Xilinx has demonstrated that it can quickly deliver a new product series in response to its evolving customer needs," said Fu Tai Liou, head of the America Business Group at UMC. "Moreover, the UMC and Xilinx partnership's ability to move the new series quickly into production supports Xilinx's strategy of enabling customers to extend the use of programmable logic into a wider range of applications."

"Emerging applications, such as video analytics and laptop ultrasound, require high processing bandwidth for a reasonable price," said Bruce Weyer, Sr. Director of Marketing for Xilinx's Processing Solutions Group. "With the availability of the Spartan-3A DSP platform, we are able to provide customers with a proven architecture while significantly lowering the price of admission into high-performance DSP applications."

Pricing and availability
The 3SD1800A device is priced at USD $29.85 and the 3SD3400A device is priced at USD $44.95. Pricing is for 25,000 units in volume production, end 2008. Customers can go to the Xilinx Online Store or contact their local Xilinx distributor to buy devices today. This includes both the space-saving CS484 and Fine-Pitch BGA FG676 packages with the lead-free option, and in the 4C/-4I and -5C speed grades.

About Xilinx XtremeDSP solutions
Xilinx is a leading supplier of high-performance reconfigurable DSP solutions optimized for performance, price and power. Xilinx XtremeDSP solutions come complete with silicon platforms, design tools, development boards and kits, reference designs, and a host of signal processing IP for wireless and multimedia video applications.

The XtremeDSP silicon portfolio delivers maximum flexibility with three device platforms: the Virtex-4 SX platform with over 250 GMACS at 500MHz, Virtex-5 SXT platform for ultra-high bandwidth with over 350 GMACS at 550MHz and integrated low-power serial connectivity, and the Spartan-3A DSP platform with the most price-performance optimized devices offering over 30 GMACS at 250MHz. Detailed information is available at www.xilinx.com/dsp.