2015, the Year of the Sheep…And the 16nm FPGA

2015, the Year of the Sheep…And the 16nm FPGA
by Paul McLellan on 03-10-2015 at 7:00 am

If you live in California anyway, with its large Asian population, you can’t have helped noticing that it was the Lunar New Year a couple of weeks ago, the start of the year of the sheep. A couple of days after the New Year, Xilinx announced their new families of what they now call FPGAs, 3D ICs and MPSoCs. But which the rest of us … Read More


Xilinx’s 16nm UltraScale+ FPGA is Revolutionary

Xilinx’s 16nm UltraScale+ FPGA is Revolutionary
by Luke Miller on 03-01-2015 at 7:00 am

Well a very belated Happy New Year dear reader. I must admit, it has been a very long winter and it has caused the Miller’s to rethink this vital question. “What in the world are we doing living in NY”. So we are moving, and hopefully this is my last ‘real’ winter as we headed down south. To perhaps alleviate some of the winter blues from … Read More


Xilinx ships the VU440 and its 4M logic cells

Xilinx ships the VU440 and its 4M logic cells
by Don Dingee on 01-27-2015 at 8:00 pm

Xilinx has delivered not only “the biggest FPGA on the planet”, but what it claims is currently the world’s largest integrated circuit: the Virtex UltraScale VU440, with 19 billion transistors fabbed in TSMC 20nm. The list of first customers to receive parts says a lot about the state of SoC design today, and the vital role FPGA-based… Read More


Xilinx Creates Worlds Fastest, Densest, DSP Rich FPGA and Shipping Now

Xilinx Creates Worlds Fastest, Densest, DSP Rich FPGA and Shipping Now
by Luke Miller on 11-12-2014 at 10:00 am

Xilinx, last week announced that it has shipped the 20nm Kintex-115 Device, and I quote:

“Xilinx has produced a 20nm FPGA for data center acceleration called Kintex UltraScaleKU115 FPGA.
The chips deliver up to:

· 1.16M logic cells,
· 5,520 optimized DSP slices,
· 76 Mbits of block RAM,
· 16.3Gbps backplane-capable transceivers,Read More


Xilinx UltraScale leads the way on connectivity

Xilinx UltraScale leads the way on connectivity
by Luke Miller on 09-21-2014 at 10:00 am

Even though Xilinx FPGAs seem to keep growing in densities and gobbling up boards into a single part, there is still the need for chip to chip connectivity and of course backplane connectivity. Xilinx 20nm UltraScale, TODAY, can really move 28 gb/s over the back plane. This is something that you cannot do with Altera 20nm, they are… Read More


Xilinx KCU105 Evaluation board is key for your demo

Xilinx KCU105 Evaluation board is key for your demo
by Luke Miller on 06-16-2014 at 5:34 pm

I love God, my wife, kids, and FPGA boards. I know I am not alone, there are other nerds out there, don’t be shy. Friday my “Kintex® UltraScale™ FPGA KCU105 Evaluation Kit” came in. Think about this, this is real 20nm Xilinx FPGA hardware that really works. Below is a nice picture of all the swizzles the board has.

I believe this is the … Read More


Secret to Beating Your FPGA Competitor’s Design

Secret to Beating Your FPGA Competitor’s Design
by Luke Miller on 05-17-2014 at 6:00 am

Can I ask you a personal question dear reader? It is only fair, you know so much about me and all, so here goes… Why are you still hand coding you’re FPGA design? Surely you are not hand coding interfaces, like PCie, SRIO, DDR, GbE, JESD204B, HMC etc… Correct? OK, why then are you still hand coding the guts of the world’s best, super-duper… Read More


Xilinx’s UltraScale vs Arria 10 – Non dolet, Paete

Xilinx’s UltraScale vs Arria 10 – Non dolet, Paete
by Luke Miller on 03-18-2014 at 9:30 pm

The DSP48E2 (I do not come up with these names… Could have named it a multiplier thingy) in the Xilinx 20nm UltraScale family (I do not come up with these names… Could of named it Virtex-8, or Luke-8) is simply amazing. Today was good, as I began playing with UltraScale tools and seeing how the DSP checks out. I also encourage you to check… Read More


Xilinx’s Mixed Signal FPGA

Xilinx’s Mixed Signal FPGA
by Luke Miller on 01-28-2014 at 10:00 am

Something in all the Xilinx chatter of UltraScale 20nm, 16nm, having massive amounts of Gigabit transceivers, DSP blocks, RAM, HLS, Rapid Design Closure gets lost… and that is Xilinx’s ability for Mixed Signals. I do not mean when you are talking with the wife (Remember Listen!), but a wonderful block that lives within… Read More


Get into a Xilinx FPGA for Under $90

Get into a Xilinx FPGA for Under $90
by Luke Miller on 12-27-2013 at 6:30 pm

Jump into Xilinx Programmable Logic today! I wanted to encourage my dear readers if you have not tried using an Xilinx FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) or even CPLD (Complex Programmable Logic Device) then it is worth your time to begin your evaluation. Maybe you got one for Christmas? If not, it is easier than you think to start… Read More