ELKRIDGE, MD–July 19, 2007–Embedded Systems Design, Inc. (ESD), an embedded engineering services and products company delivering high-performance, real-time, embedded processing systems, today announced its release of the StreamBlade™ MiniFX. This 3.5” X 3.0” FPGA-based processing board is designed to process real-time streaming data. The board is the result of ESD’s consulting work with a Product Developer specializing in direction finding and geo-location products and systems for Commercial & Government customers. The MiniFX is ideally suited for streaming applications such as telecommunications protocol processing, software-defined radio (SDR), and real-time streaming data, including video and voice processing, generation, recording, and playback.
“The MiniFX is the newest member of ESD’s StreamBlade™ product family, offering software infrastructure and hardware building blocks for developers to prototype and build distributed FPGA-based processing systems easily and affordably,” said Mark Wecht, President and CEO, ESD. “Like other StreamBlade boards, the MiniFX was conceived to solve a specific challenge in a customer’s system, in this case implementing one quarter of the StreamBlade™ SOE-4 board’s functions and interface with a customer’s dual ADC board.”
The MiniFX receives streaming data IF samples from two ADCs, performs SDR functions, computes steering vectors (used for direction finding), and provides results via Gigabit Ethernet. Using Ethernet to implement a distributed computer backplane, configuration, and control, the MiniFX allows developers to take full advantage of its configured Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGA available with a FX20, FX40, or FX60. The device supports a 10/100/1000 Ethernet port, two serial ports, plus an assortment of LVDS connectors which enable direct user-configurable access to the FPGA. With 128MB of DDR2 SDRAM, developers can use the MiniFX as a dual PPC405 processing board, a pure FPGA processing board, or for combined hardware/software boundary processing.
“FPGAs enable considerable acceleration of processing capabilities and reduction of size, weight and power consumption (SWAP) in many applications,” said Wecht. “Yet FPGA adoption and the development of combined hardware/software boundary solutions have been held up by the lack of development tools and user friendly processing fabric. We are intent on addressing both of these obstacles with the StreamBlade™ product family.”
The boards are delivered with the MiniFX Development Kit, which is compliant with Xilinx EDK 8.2i and includes sample applications to help customers begin using the product immediately. System-on-FPGA (SoFPGA) reference designs are provided, including cores for DDR2 SDRAM control. The development kit also includes utilities for loading FPGA bit streams and PPC405 elf files into MiniFX flash memory.
The MiniFX processing boards, part number SB-MiniFX, are available eight weeks ARO. Boards are $2,500.00 in single quantities, configured with FX60 FPGAs.
ESD’s service business provides continuous customer feedback, which forms the basis for additional product development in the StreamBlade™ family. In addition, the company continues to develop specialized FPGA-based solutions for companies that require new technology, reducing the costs and risks that come with in-house development programs.
About Embedded Systems Design, Inc.:
Embedded Systems Design, Inc. (ESD) is an innovative team of system architects and engineers delivering advanced embedded hardware and software engineering services and products for the development of high-performance, real-time, embedded processing systems. ESD has been providing embedded engineering services and developing hardware and software solutions for customers since 1996. The solutions ESD creates are independent of specific technologies; its engineers apply the most appropriate technical alternatives to meet customer requirements, employing both current and emerging technologies. www.embedded-sys.com
