Designs for embedded systems require a series of hardware and software components, including compilers, debuggers, operating systems, IP cores, companion chipsets, and prototyping platforms. The flexibility, reprogrammability, functionality, and performance of Xilinx® Virtex™-4 FPGAs, along with supporting hardware/software components, provide an excellent solution for today’s challenging and complex embedded system designs.

As illustrated in Figure 1, embedded system designs with Xilinx FPGAs and supported processors (such as the PowerPC™ 405 hard-core and MicroBlaze™ soft-core processor) comprise both standard FPGA hardware and processor software developments in parallel. This parallel integration and flow is enabled by the Xilinx Embedded Development Kit (EDK) and ISE™ Foundation™ software. The final design requires a hardware platform to provide a vehicle for evaluation and validation. Xilinx offers a series of Spartan-™, Virtex-II Pro-, and Virtex-4-based development, evaluation, and prototyping platforms that you can use for such purposes.

These embedded system development and prototyping platforms are carefully designed to provide the right set of FPGAs, interfaces, connectors, and support packages. For Virtex-4-based embedded system designs utilizing embedded hard-coded PowerPC or MicroBlaze soft processors, we recommend the ML401, ML402, ML403, ML405, and ML410 platforms. These platforms are supported by a wide range of reference designs, IP cores (evaluation), and Xilinx and third-party tools.

ML403
Populated with a Virtex-4 XC4VFX12 device, the ML403 is a low-cost, feature-rich, and easy-to-use embedded system development platform (Figure 2). The XC4VFX12 device – with one embedded PowerPC 405 processor and more than 12,000 FPGA slices, along with access to a wide set of connectors and interfaces – makes the ML403 a good candidate for embedded system developments. The FPGA gates and PowerPC processor can be accessed through on-board USB (host and peripheral), 10/100/1000 Ethernet, audio in/out, CompactFlash card interface, and 64 general-purpose I/O (GPIO) pins.

FPGA configuration is supported by Parallel Cable IV cable (JTAG), System ACE™ controller (JTAG), platform flash memory, and linear flash plus CPLD. System ACE technology supports multiple bitstreams and provides an easy, scalable, and reusable configuration.

The ML403 board contains headers (0.1”) for easy expansion or adaptation of the board for other applications through customized modules. The expansion connectors contain connections to singleended (32) and differential FPGA I/Os (16 pairs), ground, 2.5V/3.3V/5V power, JTAG chain, and the IIC bus.

The availability of 64 MB of on-board DDR SDRAM (32-bit interface at 266 MHz) and external memory through a ardbus reader provides ample storage for operating system developments. The ML403 is currently supported by Linux and Vxworks operating systems.

Other important features of the ML403 board include 10/100/1000 tri-mode Ethernet, USB host and peripheral ports, stereo AC97 audio CODEC, RS-232 serial port, VGA output, PS/2 mouse and keyboard, 9 Mb of ZBT synchronous SRAM, and 8 MB of flash memory. Additional product information is available at www.xilinx.com/ml403.

ML401, ML402, and ML405
The ML401 and ML402 platforms share the same features as the ML403, but are populated with Virtex-4 XC4VLX25 and XC4VSX35 devices, respectively. The ML405 is populated with a Virtex-4 XC4VFX20 device and provides additional support for RocketIO™ multi-gigabit transceivers (MGTs) through two SATA, one SFP, and four SMA connectors.

Xilinx board database (XBD) files for all boards in the ML4 family are available as part of the EDK library.

ML410
Populated with a Xilinx Virtex-4 XC4VFX60 device and supported by a wide set of industry-standard connectors, interfaces, and companion chipsets, the ML410 platform (with ATX form factor) is an ideal platform for embedded system developments (Figure 3).

With two embedded PowerPC 405 processors, the ML410 is an excellent platform for parallel and distributed processing applications and development. In addition to the processors, the ML410 provides access to RocketIO MGTs through PCI Express slots (two); Serial ATA (two); and Z-dok-based personality modules. These PM101 and PM102 personality modules (the latter shown in Figure 4), are mainly designed to provide access to eight channels of RocketIO MGTs through SFP, X-PAK, and MSA300 connectors. Personality modules also provide access to the LVDS and single-ended I/Os of the FX60 device.

The ALI M1535D+ south bridge companion chipset provides access to many features supported by standard PCs. These basic PC features are accessible over the PCI bus. The ALI chipset supports one parallel port, two USB ports, two IDE connectors, GPIO, SMBus interface, AC97 audio CODEC, and PS/2 keyboard and mouse.

To host PCI-based modules, the ML410 provides access to two PCI Express downstream slots. The ML410 also provides access to two 33 MHz/32-bit PCI buses, a primary 3.3V PCI bus and secondary 5.0V PCI bus (a total of four slots). The FPGA is directly connected to the PCI Express and primary 3.3V PCI bus, while the 5.0V PCI bus is connected to the primary PCI bus through a PCI-to-PCI bridge.

For high-speed communication, the ML410 supports two 10/100/1000 Base-T PHY with RJ45 connectors for two independent systems (1x connected through RGMII/MII and 1x connected through SGMII).

To support high-speed storage applications, the ML410 platform provides two Serial ATA host connectors targeting 1.5 Gbps operation.

In addition to 64 MB of DDR memory, the ML410 provides support for as much as 1 GB of DDR 2 memory through a 64-bit DIMM socket (supporting buffered and unbuffered DIMM). Together with the System ACE CF controller providing hard-disk access to additional memory on CompactFlash cards, the ML410 offers ample storage area for operating system and software development. The ML410 is currently supported by Linux, Vxworks, and QNX operating systems.

FPGA configuration is supported through Parallel Cable IV cable (JTAG), System ACE controller (JTAG), platform flash memory, and linear flash plus CPLD. Additional product information is available at www.xilinx.com/ml410.

Conclusion
As summarized in Table 1, embedded system developments with Virtex-4 devices are supported by a wide range of Xilinx-designed platforms. These platforms enable you to significantly expedite hardware and software development.

In conjunction with these platforms, the availability of different reference designs, OPB- and PLB-based IP cores, EDK, operating systems, compilers, debuggers, and technical support make embedded system design an easy and pleasant experience.

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