Virtex-5 FXT devices in production; new Virtex-5 TXT FPGA platform becomes available

The folks at Xilinx have announced that the Virtex-5 FXT FPGA platform with 6.5 Gbps RocketIO GTX transceivers and embedded PowerPC 440 processor cores has begun shipping in production, while samples of its new transceiver-optimized Virtex-5 TXT FPGA platform are now available.

Now shipping in production are the Virtex-5 FX30T, FX70T, and FX130T devices, with the remaining FX100T and FX200T devices available now as samples and scheduled to be in production by the end of the month. The new Virtex-5 TXT platform, built for use in next generation Ethernet bridging and other ultra high-bandwidth applications has also begun shipping with the Virtex-5 TX240T available as samples, and is on track to be in production by the end of first quarter, 2009. Finally, the Virtex-5 SX240T device, built to deliver up to 528 GMACs of multiply-and-accumulate performance and over 190 GFLOPS of single-precision, floating-point DSP performance, will also be shipping in production by the end of the month.

Xilinx began shipping what they refer to as "domain-optimized FPGAs" in May 2006. Available in five platforms, each optimized for specific application needs, Virtex-5 FPGAs are the world's first 65nm FPGA family fabricated in 1.0v, triple-oxide process technology, providing up to 330,000 logic cells, 1,200 I/O pins, 48 low-power transceivers, and built-in PowerPC 440 processor, PCIe endpoint and Ethernet MAC blocks, depending upon the device selected.

Currently all 26 Virtex-5 devices are available for designs backed by extensive IP, hardware development platforms, development tool support, and characterization reports. Furthermore, the Virtex-5 FXT FPGA is said to offer the first FPGA-based 5 Gbps x8 PCIe 2.0 solution, and has recently passed the first round of specification testing at the PCI-SIG Compliance Workshop #62. The Virtex-5 FXT FPGA platform is now on the industry organization's official integrator's list. The same GTX transceivers are also available in the TXT platform and enable customers to take advantage the high transceiver count and offer a low-risk path to implement PCIe 2.0 based applications.

Pricing and availability
Xilinx is now delivering 26 devices across five platforms (LX, LXT, SXT, FXT and TXT). Devices are available through Xilinx Distributors.

The Virtex-5 FX30T, FX70T, and FX130T production devices, as well as FX100T, FX200T and TX240T engineering samples may be purchased through Xilinx distributors.

The Virtex-5 SX240T, FX100T, FX200T, are scheduled to be in production by end of the calendar year, with the TX150T and TX240T devices scheduled to be in production by end of first calendar quarter of 2009.

Detailed pricing information on all three devices is available through Xilinx sales offices and distributors. Xilinx Virtex-5 EasyPath FPGAs offer a conversion-free path to high volume with up to 75 percent cost reduction. Virtex-5 EasyPath devices are available now for design with volume production at the end of 2008. Visit www.xilinx.com/virtex5 or www.xilinx.com/easypath for more information.