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Achieving 1066-MHz DDR3 Performance With Advanced Silicon and Memory IP

FPGA applications are demanding higher memory bandwidth and greater performance. To meet these requirements, we offer external memory solutions that are faster, better, and easier to use.

In this 15-minute webcast, you’ll learn:

  • How we achieved 1066-MHz DDR3 interfaces in our 28-nm Stratix® V FPGAs.
  • How we enhanced our memory intellectual property (IP) through extensive verification and more accurate timing models.
  • Read More → "Achieving 1066-MHz DDR3 Performance With Advanced Silicon and Memory IP"

Moore Passing Zone

There has always been a class of designers for whom the biggest is just not big enough.

Despite over two decades of Moore’s-Law-driven progress in FPGA design, with exponential growth in gate counts tracking at or ahead of the rest of the semiconductor industry, there have always been (and still are today) those folks who want bigger and better FPGAs than the best the industry could deliver.  Ten years ago, when Xilinx introduced the first Virtex devices (with a whopping 27,648 logic cells in the biggest device), these people said, “27K just isn’ … Read More → "Moore Passing Zone"

Recognizable Gestures

Anyone who thinks humans primarily communicate verbally hasn’t spent much time misinterpreting emails or text messages. Much of our communication load may be carried over the audio channel, but the accompanying video carries more than a few hints as to how to react to what’s been said.

Part of that is simply stance and expression. But, depending on culture, more or less of what is being said may be expressed by gesture. For highly expressive people, you can see them at a distance and … Read More → "Recognizable Gestures"

Increased Productivity Using Team Design

Xilinx® FPGAs offer up to 2 million logic cells incapacity—and they continue to grow. Designs of thiscomplexity usually require a team of developers, and often, a team leader, who is responsible for the synthesis and implementation of the entire design.To  make  matters  more  challenging,  the  developers can be located internationally, with different portions of the design developed in different locations, and even by different companies. The Xilinx Team Design flow introduced in ISE® DesignSuite 13.1 focuses on solving these challenges.

Read More → "Increased Productivity Using Team Design"

Repeatable Results with Design Preservation

Increasingly, FPGA designs are no longer just the“glue logic” of the past; they are becoming morecomplex every year, often incorporating challengingIP such as PCI Express® cores. The complex modules in newer designs, even when not changing, can present difficulties when attempting to meet quality of-result (QoR) requirements. Time spent trying to maintain timing in these modules is not only frustrating, but often unproductive as well.

The design preservation flow solves this issue by allowing the customer to meet timing on … Read More → "Repeatable Results with Design Preservation"

Bringing the Good News from Leuven

It is strange sitting indoors on a grey wet day in Belgium — and Belgium does pretty good grey and wet in October — listening to people talking about photovoltaic cells. But then imec, in Leuven, Belgium, is a pretty strange place.

When Bryon wrote about imec earlier this year, he commented that, even with the steady stream of press releases, it was difficult to get a handle on what the organisation actually does. If you have been watching the news channel at Techfocusmedia.com, … Read More → "Bringing the Good News from Leuven"

Stupid Customers!

Sometimes customers can be the stupidest people. Why do they have such a hard time using simple products? And why are they so allergic to reading manuals, FAQs, or help screens?

We’ve all heard the (likely apocryphal) story about the tech support technician who breaks the news to his customer that the CD-ROM tray isn’t really a cup holder. Are users really this dumb? Well, yes and no. A lot of tech-support lunacy is spawned because the engineers and programmers who create stuff (that’s us) don’t have the same … Read More → "Stupid Customers!"

Agile Mixed Signal Addresses Analog Design Challenges

Many diverse electronic systems contain significant analog functionality. The system might need to interface directly to the real world through sensors to monitor and control the environment, for example, in an industrial automation application. Other applications might need to monitor the operating environment to ensure safe and reliable operation, for example, monitoring temperatures and power supply conditions in a communications infrastructure application. The challenges range from designing the analog conditioning circuits that need to be implemented prior to analog-to-digital conversion to verifying the analog and … Read More → "Agile Mixed Signal Addresses Analog Design Challenges"

austriamicrosystems announces new “green” LED driver to efficiently power high-resolution LED displays

Unterpremstaetten, Austria (October 18, 2011) – austriamicrosystems (SIX: AMS), a leading global designer and manufacturer of high-performance analog ICs, has announced the AS1123 constant-current, 16-channel LED driver with an on-chip diagnostic read-back function. The AS1123 is designed for use in industrial applications, indoor/outdoor public information displays, LED panels, and large LED video walls.

Designed with a maximum LED supply voltage of 5.5 V, the new power-efficient AS1123 direct LED driver is optimized for LED panels where only a single LED is connected per output. The optimization of the LED driver to those low supply voltages allows for up to 50 % … Read More → "austriamicrosystems announces new “green” LED driver to efficiently power high-resolution LED displays"

featured blogs
Apr 24, 2026
A thought experiment in curiosity, confusion, and cosmic consequences....