The Correct Abstraction

The science and math behind the business of engineering is terrific. There is often a spectrum of choice for a particular implementation. That hardware and software can be abstracted in a similar fashion is hugely empowering. More choice! But we need metrics, hard quantitative measures to validate our decisions. Otherwise it's just qualitative balance.

4DSP FMC Card (2010)

ADO Firmware (1981)

Preparing for FCCM Charlotte

FCCM-2010 is in Charlotte in a week. There is a lot to prepare.

Napa has wine, what will Charlotte offer?

Well Connected

Validating performance of ADCs and DACs is hard enough for the converter and board vendors. We have those challenges, as well as system level concerns. When you place an converter a few cm from a 100W GPU, how would you think the SFDR would change? Fun stuff.

GPU and FPGA Love

Big DAC Attack

We've been putting some miles on the amazing RF ADCs and DACs that are now available. In particular, we like the Maxim MAX19693, a 4GSPS 12b DAC that is exceptionally well-targeted at our market's needs.

RF Bow-Tie

A Brief History of FMC (VITA-57)

The FPGA Mezzanine Connector (FMC) standard is just starting to become popular. It's said to be "brand new". However work on the concept and specification began in 2005 when FPGA vendors and clients realized that specializing IO for FPGA was a serious challenge. My speculation was that the idea was born in a dialog between David Squires and Craig Lund. They passed the concept along to their respective underlings Sabine Lam and me. On November 16, 2005 over two dozen industry participants came together at the Paramount hotel in Seattle, WA to hash out a standards development roadmap. The team promptly put Malachy Devlin (then CTO and co-founder Nallatech) in the lead role. Throughout 2006 there would be face-face meetings in Monterey, Park City, and Madrid, to work through details not covered in the weekly con-calls. By the end of 2007, the "VITA-57" had become "FMC" (after "XMC", "AMC", etc), and the standard was out for approval. In 2008, VITA placed the documents on their FMC web page. And in 2009 we see the first flush of mezzanines and carriers hitting the market. A lot of work by a broad team to achieve consensus.

Park City, UT

Madrid

Monterey

ISE 11.4 L.68 Looking Great

Like the first winter storm of the season outside our offices, ISE 11.4 L.68 rolled in last night. No issues through our first round of regressions with the OpenCPI oc1001-ml555 baseline. Vendors should follow Xilinx' lead for low-impact, minimally-disruptive minor releases like this.

1500 MHz DAC Pilot Tone

V6 - for real this time

We've seen V6 teasers for months now. But it all became real when Avnet (our distributor) delivered V6-LX240T production silicon on ML605s last week. Fortunately, a rainy November weekend meant full steam ahead. I suppose we were expecting more problems. Essentially, everything works. Nice work, team X! Who's next?