October 6, 2010, Reno Nevada, USA – The release of two new analog-to-digital / digital-to-analog cards based on the FPGA mezzanine card standard (FMC) has been announced by 4DSP, LLC. The FMC204 and FMC150 daughter cards are mechanically and electrically compliant to FMC standard (ANSI/VITA 57.1).
The FMC204 is a quad channel D/A FMC daughter card, providing four channels of 16-bit D/A at 1 Gsps. The FMC204 allows flexible control on clock source, sampling frequency, and calibration through an I2C communication bus and includes a high-pin count (HPC) connector and front panel I/O. The FMC204 supports LVDS/2.5V IO signaling and includes an HDMI connector for user defined signaling.
The FMC150 is a dual channel A/D and dual channel D/A FMC daughter card. The card provides two channels of 14-bit A/D at 250Msps and two channels of 16-bit D/A at 800Msps. The FMC150 allows flexible control on clock source, analog input gain, and offset correction through serial communication busses and includes a low-pin count connector and front panel I/O. The FMC150 supports LVDS/2.5V IO signaling. The design is based on TI’s ADS62P49 dual channel 14-bit 250Msps ADC and TI’s DAC3283 dual channel 16-bit 800Msps DAC.
Both cards can be clocked by an internal clock source, optionally locked to an external reference, or by an external sample clock supplied through a coax connection. In addition, there is one trigger input for customized sampling control. Additionally, both the FMC204 and FMC150 cards can be used in a conduction cooled or convection cooled environment and are equipped with power supply and temperature monitoring and offer several power-down modes to switch off unused functions, reducing system level power and heat, making them well suited for software defined radio (SDR), battery or other low power source applications. This is ideal for applications such as airborne where power demand effects mission range and on-station mission time.
With the release of these latest 4DSP FMC cards, which are based on the ANSI/VITA 57.1 2008 standard for FPGA I/O mezzanine cards, 4DSP continues its commitment to developing a robust line of products around this standard. The growing line of 4DSP FMC series cards continues to add to the range of A/D and D/A functionality across a wide frequency range.
“The FMC VITA 57.1 standard does not only offer a common form factor for I/O cards, it also brings a high level of ruggedization at an acceptable price point with a non proprietary interface. As a result, the wide adoption of FPGA mezzanine cards across various industries has become a reality. The current FMC portfolio from 4DSP already benefits system integrators and end users in applications where high performance in a small form factor is required,” commented Pierrick Vulliez, CTO and Founder of 4DSP.
“Combining the versatility of the FMC standard and FPGAs creates an interesting spectrum of application opportunities in markets such as aerospace and defense, medical, industrial, telecommunications, video, and many others that rely on FPGAs for their digital signal processing (DSP) price/performance benefits and for their ability to accommodate a broad assortment of I/O requirements,” said Raj Seelam, Senior Marketing Manager, Platform Solutions, at Xilinx. “The emergence of the FMC standard has essentially modularized the board design effort into a processing engine (the carrier card) and an I/O engine (the FMC module). Designers can now reuse a single carrier card – comprising one or more FPGAs and an appropriate number and type of FMC connectors and boards – as the foundation for any number of markets and applications.”
Shepard Siegel, CTO of Atomic Rules and contributor to the original FMC specification says, “4DSP products are terrific examples of engineering for function, performance and value. In specific, the FMC150 has exceeded our expectations and will enable SIGINT applications on COTS platforms by way of OpenCPI.”
About 4DSP, LLC
4DSP (www.4dsp.com) is an innovative hardware, software and VHDL IP Core manufacturer specializing in low-power, low-weight and compact FPGA based signal and image processing systems. Headquartered in Reno Nevada, USA with offices in Austin TX and the Netherlands, 4DSP is a developer of VHDL arithmetic based reconfigurable computers (FPGAs) of advanced architecture which offer customers maximum flexibility and scalability. 4DSP offers customer build-to-spec hardware and VHDL systems that deliver unmatched performance for a broad range of advanced digital signal processing (DSP) applications for video image processing, software defined radio (SDR), RADAR and many more real-time embedded applications