Munich, 16 September 2020 – PRO DESIGN, veteran in the E²MS industry and leading supplier of high-speed ASIC and SoC verification platforms, launches today its new proFPGA UNO, DUO and QUAD systems based on the latest Xilinx® Virtex® UltraScale+™ VU19P FPGA technology. These state of the art platforms are the next generation of PRO DESIGN’s modular and scalable high performance (multi)FPGA prototyping solutions. The new systems are used for high-speed design verification and bug hunting to shorten time to market by eliminating costly re-spins and providing early prototypes for software and application development.
Scalable from 1 up to 4 pluggable Xilinx® Virtex® UltraScale+™ VU19P based FPGA modules, the flagship of the proFPGA product family, the QUAD system, offers a capacity of up to 192 M ASIC gates, which is nearly a factor of 1.6x compared to the previous Xilinx® Virtex® UltraScale™ XCVU440 based generation. Up to nine proFPGA QUAD systems with overall 36 FPGA modules can easily be connected together to increase the capacity up to 1,728M ASIC gates. The proFPGA QUAD VU19P system offers 58 extension sites, with a total of 7728 FPGA standard I/Os. This is about 45% more compared to the previous generation and gives the user a maximum flexibility regarding FPGA interconnections and connecting peripherals (e.g. standard proFPGA interface and memory daughter boards or application specific extension boards). In addition, the new QUAD platform offers 16 extension sites with a total of 192 free accessible multi-gigabit transceivers to connect and verify high-speed interfaces like PCIe Gen4 or QSFP28.
The latest Xilinx® Virtex® UltraScale+™ FPGA technology, high-speed PCB design with delay matched signal lines and high-end PCB materials allow the new proFPGA platforms to offer best signal integrity and to run up to 30% faster than the previous proFPGA XCVU440-based product generation. Through standard I/Os the system achieves a single-ended point-to-point performance of about 1.4 Gbps and via the Multi Gigabit Transceivers (MGTs) even up to 25 Gbps.
The big advantage and key differentiator of the proFPGA concept is its modularity. The user can for example use the UNO system for IP or sub designs development and later reuse the FPGA modules for complete SoC and ASIC prototyping by simply plugging the same proFPGA Xilinx® Virtex® UltraScale+™ VU19P modules on a DUO or QUAD motherboard. These innovative technology and methodology offer best in class reusability and highest return on invest. The new proFPGA VU19P product family is fully compatible to the previous proFPGA generations. That means, all proFPGA motherboards, FPGA modules, daughter cards and accessories can be used in combination with the new proFPGA VU19P FPGA modules. Further, it allows the customer to mix and match the new Xilinx® Virtex® UltraScale+™ VU19P technology with the previous Virtex® 7, Virtex® UltraScale™, Virtex® UltraScale+™ and Zynq™ technology on one system.
The proFPGA systems are equipped with a smart mechanical construction and cooling concept, which guarantees high robustness, easy system handling and most efficient system and FPGA cooling. At the same time, the systems represent with its small form factor and well thought out system architecture the most compact FPGA-based prototyping system on the market.
All proFPGA systems come with the proFPGA Builder software, which provides an extensive set of features, like debugging, advanced clock management, integrated self- and performance test, automatic board detection and I/O voltage programming, system scan- and safety mechanisms, parallel use mode and easy remote system configuration and monitoring through USB, Ethernet or PCIe. All that simplifies the usage of the system tremendously.
Optionally, PRO DESIGN offers the proFPGA Cut software, which is a design partitioning tool, which helps to partition designs across multiple FPGAs. This tool was released at the beginning of this year works seamlessly with new proFPGA Xilinx® Virtex® UltraScale+™ VU19P product family.
“We are very proud and excited about the release of our 4th generation of Xilinx®- based prototyping systems. We released our first proFPGA product line at end of 2012 and since then we’ve already won about 200 customers. During these years we carefully listened to our customers and their needs and steadily enhanced our platforms with each new generation. With our latest proFPGA Xilinx Virtex® UltraScale+™ VU19P based product generation we have further improved our product family and are one of the first prototyping system vendors who has developed a XCVU19P-based solution developed. We could once again demonstrate that we are at the top of technology. Our engineers did a fantastic job and created an even more powerful and competitive solution that fulfils the highest needs in the increasing complexity of today’s ASIC designs for AI, machine learning, 5G or datacentre applications. Our customers will like it and benefit a lot from it.”, said Gunnar Scholl, CEO of PRO DESIGN.
Availability
The proFPGA UNO, DUO and QUAD Virtex® UltraScale+™ VU19P systems will be available at mid of October 2020 and can be ordered from now on.
About PRO DESIGN
The privately-held company was founded in 1982 and has about 100 employees at various facilities in Germany, France and the US. PRO DESIGN has more than 38 years of experience in the EDA and E²MS markets. The company has built-up extensive knowledge in the areas of FPGA board development, electronic engineering, FPGA design, high-speed PCB design, mechanical construction/design, production/assembly and testing.
For more information, please visit: http://www.proFPGA.com
