Vivado 2012.2 / ISE 14.2

Xilinx released Vivado 2012.2 / ISE 14.2 today. Aside from advancing some of the 7-series goodness we've been waiting for with the KC705, we were thrilled that Xilinx fixed issues we were having with PlanAhead when targeting the long-in-the-tooth Spartan 3-DSP devices used in the popular Ettus radios. Nice: We love PlanAhead and we're glad it works great with S3-DSP.

FCCM-2012 Toronto

I arrived at FCCM-2012 Toronto yesterday and had a nice walk around the UT campus. Excellent Indian diner last night at Banjara with Microsoft Research, UPenn, and Imperial all chiming in. Looking forward to the Sunday workshop today, and the rest of the conference in general. These guys are changing the world while we do our small part translating bits of spectrum up and down, hopefully without getting too much in anyone's way.

MathWorks MATLAB R2012A

We are excited about MathWorks release of MATLAB R2012A and the rest of the product suite. There were no unexpected surprises and quite a few new features. Our clients are thrilled we're on the leading edge and we are proud to be a MathWorks Connections Partner.

Instead of "No", explore "How"

Steve Trimberger explained to me a client engagement technique which I appreciated. Our discussion stemmed from a mutual desire as engineers to be honest to our science, while at the same time allowing our businesses to thrive.

When a potential client volleys a challenge that strays from your centerline, instead of a tacit “No”, offer up “How”. There is a spectrum of how. Perhaps how is a development effort unaligned with your current world view? Perhaps how is a story that you tell with some embarrassment?

This is consistent with the Happy Mistakes meme in that allows you extract information from a scenario that would otherwise be a dead end. It is especially useful if, in telling the story, you do measure some embarrassment, and you now have voice-of-the-customer feedback to guide you forward. Of course, "How" may also lead you down a path that turns a "No" to a "Yes".

KC705 Supported

With the release this month of ISE 13.4, we have added the Xilinx KC705 to the list of supported OpenCPI FPGA platforms. We adapted the new AXI-centric Gen2 x4/x8 PCIe endpoint to our uNoC without much drama. Inbound (RX) straddled packets were an interesting twist. Kudos to the Xilinx team for producing such a clean and easy-to-use evaluation kit and help jumpstart our community adoption of 28nm FPGAs in practice. The KC705 is fitted with a Xilinx Kintex-7 XC7K325T device.

KC705 at Atomic Rules

North American FPGA Conferences

Atomic Rules is pleased to be a sponsor of two FPGA conferences in 2012:

• FPGA-2012 in Monterey (ACM/SIGDA)
• FCCM-2012 in Toronto (IEEE)

Please click through the links above to get the details on the call-for-papers and other participation.
Additionally, you can check our News and Events page to see what else is in the works.


Shep and Oskar at Demo night, FCCM-2005 (Napa)

SIGINT bliss and the MDO4104

Regrettably we will part today with the Tektronix MDO4104-3 mixed-domain scope which we have been renting for two months. This is has been a superb instrument to use to line up RF and baseband signals. We hope to see this tool on our bench again soon.

Tektronix MDO4104-3 at Atomic Rules