Mistral announces FPGA-based XMC card

BANGALORE, INDIA: Mistral Solutions Pvt. Ltd, a leading provider of complete technology solutions and professional services in the embedded space, has announced the availability of the XMC-442, the first Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA-based XMC module (VITA 42) compute engine from Curtiss Wright, a leading designer and manufacturer of rugged deployed commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) VME and VPX products.

The XMC-442 is designed for demanding, high-performance signal and image processing applications including radar, sonar, and signal intelligence. It features the Virtex-5 SXT, the largest, highest-performance DSP-focused FPGA available from Xilinx.

The XMC-442 provides systems integrators (SIs) with a powerful FPGA-based computing engine for I/O or sensor processing or algorithm acceleration. Combining the state-of-the-art Virtex-5 SXT processor from Xilinx with a rich array of memory and I/O, the XMC-442 offers designers a powerful, easy-to-use module for a wide range of applications in both benign and rugged environments.

It significantly speeds the integration of high-performance FPGA-based custom calculation blocks onto embedded platforms that feature on-board XMC sites and enable system designers to get custom FPGA-based applications out to market faster.

Curtiss-Wright’s Continuum FXtools developer’s kit provides the XMC-442 with a comprehensive software and IP development suite. This advanced FPGA toolkit provides the software and IP blocks necessary to quickly develop a custom FPGA design and to deploy it on a range of Curtiss-Wright Continuum Software Architecture-compatible base cards.

The Continuum FXtools software includes FPGA-specific function libraries for FPGA configuration, DMA control, and other XMC-442-specific utility functions (including temperature and power sensors, command bus mappings, and diagnostics, etc.). In addition, Curtiss-Wright’s Continuum IPC communications middleware package has been extended to directly support transfers between the XMC-442’s FPGA and other FPGAs or processor nodes within the system.

The XMC-442 can operate in rugged environments and is available in air- and conduction-cooled formats. Innovative cooling techniques are employed to handle high performance FPGA implementations. This XMC daughtercard is optimized for deployment on a Curtiss-Wright CHAMP-FX2 FPGA VPX engine, but may also be used on a CHAMP-AV6, SVME-184, or VPX6-185 single-board computers.