- September 27, 2016
September 27, 2016─Pentek, introduced the Jade family of XMC products. Evolved from the designs of the Pentek Cobalt and Onyx architectures, Jade is based on the Xilinx flagship Kintex UltraScale FPGA.
The Kintex UltraScale FPGA site can be populated with a range of FPGAs to match the specific requirements of the processing task, spanning the KU035 through KU115. The KU115 features 5520 DSP48E2 slices and is ideal for modulation/demodulation, encoding/decoding, encryption/decryption, and channelization of the signals between transmission and reception. For applications not requiring large DSP resources or logic, a lower-cost FPGA can be installed.
The Jade architecture supports an optional 5 GB bank of DDR4 SDRAM memory. User-installed IP along with the Pentek supplied DDR4 controller core within the FPGA can take advantage of the memory for custom applications. The board features a Gen.3 x8 PCIe interface along with eight additional gigabit serial lanes and LVDS general purpose I/O for custom solutions.
As the central feature of the Jade architecture, the FPGA has access to all data and control paths, enabling factory-installed functions including data multiplexing, channel selection, data packing, gating, triggering and memory control. The Jade architecture organizes the FPGA as a container for data processing applications where each function exists as an intellectual property (IP) module. The Navigator Design Suite was designed from the ground up to work with Pentek’s new Jade architecture and provides an unparalleled plug-and-play solution to the complex task of IP and control software creation and compatibility. The Navigator Design Suite consists of two components: Navigator FDK (FPGA Design Kit) for integrating custom IP into Pentek sourced designs and Navigator BSP (Board Support Package) for creating host applications.
The first product to be introduced using the Jade architecture is the Model 71861, an XMC module with four 200 MHz A/D channels and programmable multiband DDCs (digital downconverters). As with all Jade products, the Model 71861 is based on the Xilinx Kintex UltraScale FPGA family with FPGA choices to match price, power and processing performance needs. In addition to XMC, this product is also available in PCIe, 3U & 6U VPX, AMC, and 3U & 6U cPCI form factors, with versions for both commercial and rugged environments.