Delivering unrivaled levels of system performance, flexibility, scalability, and integration to developers, Xilinx’s architecture for a new Extensible Processing Platform is optimized for system power, cost, and size.
Based on ARM’s dual-core Cortex™-A9 MPCore processors and Xilinx’s 28 nm programmable logic, the Extensible Processing Platform takes a processor-centric approach by defining a comprehensive processor system implemented with standard design methods. This approach provides Software Developers a familiar programming environment within an optimized, full featured, powerful, yet low-cost, low-power processing platform.
System Architects and Logic Designers can fully leverage the programmable logic to extend, customize, optimize, and differentiate their solutions. The high-bandwidth AMBA®-Advanced Extensible Interface (AXI) interconnect between the processor system and the programmable logic enables multi-gigabit data transfers at very low power, thus eliminating common performance bottlenecks for control, data, I/O, and memory. This allows the ARM-based command/control/applications processing to take advantage of the programmable logic’s massive parallel processing for handling large data payloads across a wide range of signal processing applications and/or the use of programmable logic to extend the features of ARM-based processor system.
The new Extensible Processing Platform is part of Xilinx’s Targeted Design Platform strategy that provides customers market- and application-specific environments that are easy to use. This enables the customers to evaluate and understand platform capabilities and technology, using application platforms that can be modified and extended to accelerate development time, and to focus on differentiation.
This white paper describes the relevant challenges facing the semiconductor industry and shows how these can be solved with the Extensible Processing Platform. This breakthrough architecture, combining a high-performance, low-power, low-cost processor system, with Xilinx’s innovative high-performance, low-power, 28 nm programmable logic.
