(1)
XILINX
Xilinx develops FPGA-based deserializer for TI's ADS6000 ADC line

eeProductCenter's Gina Roos says: "Xilinx, Inc. has announced the availability of a Virtex-4 FPGA-based deserializer reference design, application note and evaluation module. Developed jointly with Texas Instruments, the reference design, together with the application note, deserializes data streams from TI's ADS6000 analog-to-digital converter (ADC) family."

Readers Say:
"Virtex-4 is a piece of crap. I know cause I just finished a design using three of them."
"This architecture should improve SNR in some mixed signal designs."
"Cool idea. I'm glad I know about it now, it will come in handy some day."
"It is a useful product, but not a revolutionary one."
"The reference frequencies are out of date for projects like SDR and video communications. Much higher sampling rates are needed. The eval boards are also overpriced compared to alternate solutions like Icarus, Verilog and GTKWave."
"Very good."

USABILITY RANK: 1



(2)
ALTERA
Altera ships highest density Cyclone III FPGA

eeProductCenter's Clive Maxfield says: "Altera Corporation has announced the shipment of the EP3C120, the largest member of its new low-cost 65-nm Cyclone III FPGA family. Consuming only a fraction of the power needed by other FPGAs of comparable capacity, the EP3C120 is ideal for a broad range of applications requiring both high integration and low power, such as wireless communications infrastructure, software defined radio, and video processing and imaging."

Readers Say:
"Important for battery powered devices!"
"Cryptic and poorly organized."
"Development environment is expensive compared to other solutions."
"Cyclone III is a very attractive family and we already adopted for 2 different projects where its price performance ratio made the difference"

USABILITY RANK: 2



(3)
XILINX
CoolRunner-II starter kit cuts development time for handhelds

eeProductCenter's Ismini Scouras says: "Xilinx Inc. announced immediate availability of its low-cost CoolRunner-II CPLD starter kit, which is designed for prototyping high volume, ultra low-power applications such as handheld devices, smartphones, motor control interface, and embedded CPLD applications. The kit enables users to quickly develop and test applications while reducing design time and risk by leveraging its modular board architecture approach with multiple boards designed to work together. "

Readers Say:
"It's good for some interfaces, I2c ROM"

USABILITY RANK: 3



(4)
XILINX
Xilinx now shipping Spartan-3A DSP FPGAs

eeProductCenter's Gina Roos says: "Xilinx has announced the availability of production qualified Spartan-3A DSP-focused FPGAs. Shipping in production a month ahead of schedule, the Spartan-3A DSP platform offers 20 GMACs for under $30 for a wide range of low cost, data intensive applications including wireless, video surveillance, personal medical and consumer applications. The Spartan-3A DSP platform is part of the Xilinx XtremeDSP solutions that provide developers with a complete portfolio of programmable logic devices, IP, development tools and third party DSP ecosystem."

Readers Say:
No comments

USABILITY RANK: 5



(5)
SAMPLIFY
Samplify launches ultra-high-speed FPGA-based data compression technology

eeProductCenter's Clive Maxfield says: "Addressing the growing challenge presented by the widening gap between ever-increasing digitization rates and the fixed-bandwidth infrastructure, Samplify today announced the availability of the Samplify compression engine for FPGAs and the Samplify for Windows signal analysis tool. "

Readers Say:
"I have to evaluate this first before I will understand where to apply it."
"Cost not an issue for our prototypes"

USABILITY RANK: 8



(6)
XILINX
New kit cuts development time for non-volatile FPGAs

eeProductCenter's Clive Maxfield says: "Xilinx has announced immediate availability of its low-cost Spartan-3AN Starter Kit, ideal for prototyping high-volume non-volatile applications where higher system integration or security is critical such as broadband access, digital displays, set top boxes, data acquisition and low-power mobile and handheld devices."

Readers Say:
"It is good to see Xilinx offer a non-volatile FPGA."

USABILITY RANK: 4



(7)
VMETRO
Design kit accelerates DSP development for Virtex-5 FPGAs

eeProductCenter's Ismini Scouras says: "VMETRO and Impulse Accelerated Technologies Inc. have released the V5+C DSP development kit, an advanced platform for rapid prototyping and algorithm development. The kit, which includes the latest-generation Impulse C-to-VHDL compiler tools and a VMETRO PMC module based on the Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA, allows military and industrial system developers to hardware-accelerate DSP algorithms and quickly prototype on FPGA within an ANSI C environment."

Readers Say:
No Comments

USABILITY RANK: 6



(8)
LATTICE SEMICONDUCTOR
Lattice introduces industry's first SERDES FPGA priced below $10

eeProductCenter's Clive Maxfield says: "In conjunction with the production release of the first devices in its acclaimed LatticeECP2M FPGA family, Lattice Semiconductor has announced dramatically lower price points for the industry's first low-cost FPGAs to offer high-speed embedded SERDES I/O. Production volume prices have been reduced to as low as $9.95 for the 20K Look-Up-Table (LUT) LatticeECP2M-20, substantially below those of competitive SERDES-capable FPGAs and cracking the $10.00 price barrier for the first time. When compared to Lattice's previously announced pricing, these prices represent a price reduction of >20 percent in less than one year."

Readers Say:
"We were about to use this FPGA for SDI decoding but its SERDES proved to be unreliable so although price is attractive, device doesn't seem to be usable for some projects and documentation is very misleading."

USABILITY RANK: 7



(9)
LATTICE SEMICONDUCTOR
Lattice announces early availability of IP for Flash-based FPGAs

In case you were wondering, here's how Ultimate Products works: Our editors select up to 10 of the most significant products posted at www.eeProductCenter.com during the calendar quarter. Then, using an electronic balloting process, we submit the products with the accompanying editorial reviews to selected, qualified readers. Those readers score the products by technical significance and
USABILITY on a scale of 1 through 5, with 5 being the highest score. The product ranked No. 1 in each category was judged as most technically significant for that category. Relative
USABILITY rankings and selected reader comments are also reported. More than 1,000 of you helped to choose these products. As always, we are grateful for your enthusiastic participation.

Patrick Mannion
Editor-in-Chief, Techonline Network and eeProductcenter.com
pmannion@cmp.com