Mars XU3 UltraScale+ Module usermanual

The bring-up of our first Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ SoC module in the Mars form factor is coming along nicely - if you’d like to learn more about this compact and powerful little chap, get in touch and we'll furnish you with the user manual. Click through for more info.

Evaluation kit for FPGA Manager now available

For a speedy evaluation of our FPGA Manager communication solution, an evaluation kit is now available. It supports PCIe, Ethernet and USB 3.0, on Windows and Linux¹ hosts. In addition to an evaluation license, the kit includes a Mercury KX1-160 FPGA module, Mercury+ PE1-200 base board and power supply.

To help you get your application up and running as fast as possible, 2 hours of support are also included in the package.

• FPGA Manager Ethernet evaluation kit
• FPGA Manager PCIe evaluation kit
• FPGA Manager USB 3.0 evaluation kit
• FPGA Manager USB 2.0 evaluation kit

1. USB 3.0 is currently not supported on Linux.

High-precision EMV measurements

Every consumer electronics product has to comply with standards for electromagnetic radiation to ensure that any emitted radiation is not harmful to those who use it. The same principle applies for industrial electronic devices; there are strict rules regarding the amount of emitted radiation which is permitted. In both cases, the device’s manufacturer must prove that radiation emitted is within the allowed range. A more precise measurement of this radiation means that a smaller margin of error has to be applied and thus makes it easier it to meet the certification criteria.

We were approached by a customer with the aim of building high-precision measurement equipment for electric and magnetic fields for certification purposes. The baseboard that carries the electromagnetic sensors and all required analog electronics is being developed by the customer, and is equipped with a small, custom FPGA module. This module, as well as the FPGA firmware running on it, is being developed by Enclustra. The firmware contains a wide array of signal processing to correct any measurement distortions caused by the analog electronics, as well as complex data-logging logic and an interface to a host PC, where the final data processing is applied and the certification criteria evaluated.

Thanks to the use of ready-to-use Enclustra IP cores in this project, the development effort has been greatly reduced: FPGA Manager USB 2.0 is used for the communication with the host PC, and the buffering logic is mainly implemented using the Stream Buffer Controller IP Core.

Click through to read more about some of our customer projects.

Zynq UltraScale+ drone control

The official term is unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), apparently, which is a bit of a mouthful, so we prefer to say drone. In any case, we developed a controller for a UAV (drone) for a customer using a Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ SoC, whose CPUs implement the position control as well as tracking of the flight trajectory. The sensors and actors are attached through the FPGA logic; the number and type of these interfaces vary greatly with the type of controlled vehicle, so all of these interfaces are dynamically configurable.

The controller also supports redundancy, by having two parallel flight calculator units supervising each other. Should the currently active calculator fail, the reserve unit takes over all tasks autonomously. Aside flight control functions, the controller prepares and compresses a Full-HD video signal (HD-SDI) from a camera for transmission over radio.

Click through to read more about some of our customer projects.

The first SO-DIMM Zynq UltraScale+ Module has landed

We just received the eagerly expected Mars XU3 module. Rejoice guys, because the Mars XU3 module offers really cool features on a very tiny space! It's built around the brand new Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ and offers up to 154,000 systems logic cells, 108 user I/Os, 6 ARM® processors, a GPU, up to 4 GByte of ultra-fast DDR4 SDRAM, 64 MByte QSPI flash memory, 16 GByte eMMC flash memory and Gigabit Ethernet and USB 2.0/3.0 ports.

Sounds interesting huh? Click through for more information!