Officials at CAE Electronics Ltd. in Quebec needed a 3.3-volt field-programmable gate array (FPGA) for low-power commercial and military flight simulators. They found their answer in the XC4000XL series from Xilinx in San Jose, Calif.
"We found Xilinx`s offering of leading-edge FPGA technology met our low-power 3.3 voltage requirement without sacrificing performance or density," says Hesham El-Adly, ASIC coordinator at CAE. "In fact, after designing with the XC4000XL devices, we have seen substantial performance, power, and density improvements not attainable through other competing FPGA technologies."
El-Adly explains that designing a compelling visual environment to an aircraft pilot trainer is not an easy task.
"We have traditionally targeted high-performance ASICs [application-specific integrated circuits] to provide the required muscle," he says "With the density and performance of the XC4000XL family, we now have a credible alternative to using ASICs for some of our applications."
All XC4000XL devices offer 3.3V operation with densities ranging from 465 to 7,448 logic cells (5,000 to 85,000 logic gates).
The FPGAs` segmented routing architecture enables the XC4000XL family to provide the lowest power devices in their class, Xilinx officials claim. The architecture also has short interconnect lengths for efficient and faster connections than non-segmented architectures using long lines for interconnect. - J.M.
For more information on the XC4000XL, contact Ann Duft of Xilinx by phone at 408-879-4726, by fax at 408-559-7114, by mail to Xilinx, Inc., 2100 Logic Drive, San Jose, Calif., 95124-3400, by e-mail to [email protected], or on the World Wide Web at http://www. xilinx.com.
The XC4085 FPGA, of the XC4000XL series from Xilinx in San Jose, Calif., is being used by officials at CAE Electronics Ltd. in Quebec.
