Oct 22, 2014 Rob van Blommestein, S2C Inc. 2014-10-15 22:39:00 ARM Processors
The need for ever-connected devices is skyrocketing. As I fiddle with my myriad of electronic devices that seem to power my life, I usually end up wishing that all of them could be interconnected and controlled through the internet. The truth is, only a handful of my devices are able to fulfill that wish, but the need is there and developers are increasingly recognizing that we are moving to a connected life. The pressure to create such a connected universe is so immense that designers need a faster, more reliable way to fulfill our insatiable need.
One way to fulfill the need is for designers to adopt FPGA-based prototyping. This proven technique allows designers to explore their designs earlier and faster and thus proceed more quickly with hardware optimization and software refinement. In addition, recent capacity developments in prototyping have made it possible to realize the benefits of FPGA-based prototyping for even the largest designs. It has to be said that ARM andXilinx have been at the forefront of enabling today’s embedded designs. It is critical that prototyping technology keep pace with the advancements from ARM and Xilinx.
S2C Inc. recently announced the availability of its AXI-4 Prototype Ready™ Quick Start Kit based on the Xilinx Zynq® device. The Quick Start Kit is the latest addition to S2C’s library of Prototype Ready IP and is uniquely suited to next-generation designs including the burgeoning Internet of Things (IoT).
The Quick Start Kit adapts a Xilinx Zynq ZC702 Evaluation Board to an S2C TAI Logic Module. The evaluation board supplies a Zynq device containing an ARM dual-core Cortex-A9 CPU and a programmable logic capacity of 1.3M gates. The Quick Start Kit expands this capacity by extending the AXI-4 bus onboard the Zynq chip to external FPGAs on the TAI Logic Module prototyping system. This allows designers to quickly leverage a production-proven, AXI-connected prototyping platform with a large, scalable logic capacity – all supported by a suite of prototyping tools.
Integrating Xilinx’s Zynq All Programmable SoC device with S2C’s Virtex-based prototyping system provides designers an instant avenue to large-gate count prototypes centered around ARM's Cortex-A9 processor.
To learn more about how S2C's FPGA-based prototyping solutions are enabling the next generation of embedded devices, visit Rapid FPGA-based SoC & ASIC Prototyping - S2C.
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