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Programmable World 2003 workshops offer detailed instruction in tools, technologies, and methodologies of system designs.
Why spend your evenings and
weekends wading through product
datasheets and application notes?
Time to knowledge is just as
important as time to market.
In the international series of
forums and workshops that make up
Programmable World 2003, Xilinx
and its partners have created dozens of
free technical seminars designed to stir
your imagination, accelerate your design
cycle, and reduce the overall design cost.
An Ecosystem of Leaders
The driving concept behind
Programmable World 2003 has been the
recognition that we do not work in a vacuum.
Recognizing this, Xilinx has partnered
with such industry leaders as
IBM™, Agilent Technologies™,
Cadence™ Design Systems, Wind
River™ Systems, and Mentor Graphics.
The synergy of Xilinx and our partners
plays an inherent role in the success of
your designs.
The definition and implementation of
your design involves support from not
just your IC supplier but also from your
EDA, embedded tool, IP, and design service
partners. This is our "ecosystem" of
companies that want to support your
Xilinx-based design.
Cost-Sensitive Designs
The accessibility and usability of cutting-edge
technologies will be demonstrated
at Programmable World.
For example, the Xilinx Spartan™-3
family is based on IBM and UMC’s
advanced 90 nm, 8-layer metal process
technology. Xilinx is using 90 nm technology
to drive high-volume pricing
down to under $20 per unit by the end of
2004 for one-million-gate FPGAs. This
represents a cost savings of up to 80 percent
compared to competitive offerings.
Programmable World Forums
The Programmable World forums, which
were held earlier this year, comprised
high-level discussions and demonstrations from Xilinx and the partners mentioned
above. Other forum participants
were Boeing™, Intel™, and Texas
Instruments™, among others.
Attendees included hardware engineers,
ASIC designers, system engineers,
system architects, executives, and
researchers from more than 27 industries
and government agencies, ranging
from home networking to the military.
In the forums, panelists and presenters
explored the end-use possibilities
and real-world design challenges of using
multi-gigabit I/Os, embedded processors,
low-cost platforms, and DSP solutions:
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IBM discussed the design methods
associated with the integration of new
processor architectures in FPGA-based
systems.
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Cadence Design Systems and Xilinx
described the challenges – and solutions
– when upgrading existing systems
for higher bandwidth.
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Agilent Technologies addressed the
growing difficulties of system verification
and hardware/software debugging.
Xilinx presented strategies for solving
the connectivity challenges of integraing
ASSPs, network processors, and
memory devices.
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Xilinx described the use of processor
cores to combine the strengths of both
the processor and logic for optimum
performance and cost.
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Xilinx examined technical trends in
DSP and presented a case for new
architectures and system-level design
methodologies.
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Xilinx also demonstrated PCI
Express™, RocketPHY™,
MicroBlaze™/Spartan-3, and DSP
system products. Agilent, Cadence, Celoxica, IBM, Mentor Graphics,
Nallatech, Synplicity®, and The
MathWorks demonstrated their
respective technologies.
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In a panel discussion entitled
"What’s Required to Make High-Speed
Serial Design a Reality," panelists
from Agilent, Cadence, IBM,
Intel, Mentor Graphics, Texas
Instruments, and Xilinx confirmed
the impending proliferation of serial
technology and systems. The panelists
also highlighted the technologies
they’re creating in anticipation of
high-speed serial design demands.
User Applications
The Programmable World forums also
included presentations on actual programmable
system designs:
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Christopher Musial, a technical fellow
at Boeing-SVS, gave a presentation
entitled "Programmable
Systems Transform the Design and
Implementation of Adaptive Optics
Systems." This case study illustrated
the design processes and issues
related to the implementation of a
Xilinx Platform FPGA in a real-time
adaptive optics control system.
As Musial explained, the project
had stringent constraints for cost,
performance, power, and maintainability
– parameters challenging
many designers today.
- "A Highly Scalable FPGA-Based Car
Infotainment Platform Solution"
was the topic of Dr. Karlheinz
Weiss’ presentation. Dr. Weiss, the
director of electronic system development
at Elektroniksystem und
Logistik GmbH, described the planning,
specification, and implementation
phases of an automobile
infotainment system using Virtex-II
Pro™ and Spartan FPGAs for the
processing platform.
This design integrated audio, navigation,
telephone, Internet services, telematics
services, and video.
For those of you who missed the forums
component of Programmable World – as
well as those who wish to relive the experience
– many of the presentations are viewable
through the video-on-demand feature
at www.xilinx.com/pw2003.
Free "University Style" Workshops
Xilinx has also developed a second component
to the Programmable World
forums – a series of workshops from
September to November 2003. After
learning about the high-level concepts
discussed at the forums, you now have
the opportunity to drill down to the
details of creating your particular design.
The workshops are organized into four
major "tracks," each comprising six one-hour
sessions. You can attend any of the 24
sessions.
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Track A: Designing Flexible and
High-Performance DSP Systems.
When does it make sense to use DSP
processors or platform FPGAs individually,
and when does it make sense to
combine the unique signal processing
capabilities of both? Example scenarios
help illustrate how to best answer
these design dilemmas. Also, industry-leading
DSP solution providers
including The MathWorks, Nallatech,
Texas Instruments, and Xilinx explain
how they can help designers outsmart
Moore’s law and dramatically reduce
the development time and cost of
high-performance DSP systems.
- Track B: Integrating High-Performance
Embedded Processing
Solutions. This track focuses on
technologies of interest to embedded
systems designers from companies
such as Altium™, IBM, Wind River
Systems, and Xilinx.
- Track C: Implementing Cost-Effective
Connectivity Solutions.
Seeking low-cost connectivity applications?
Cadence, Intel, and Xilinx present
examples of gigabit Ethernet
applications; implementation of high-speed parallel and multi-gigabit serial
interfaces for chip-to-chip and backplane
communications; and designing
with serial technology.
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Track D: Effective System Design for
Programmable Systems. FPGAs provide
a variety of flexible and powerful
capabilities and have evolved into true
system platforms. This track offers
engineers new and innovative information
from Agilent, Celoxica,
Mentor Graphics, Synopsys™,
Synplicity, and Xilinx on how to
extract the most performance from
your system designs.
Conclusion
The Programmable World 2003 series
of tradeshows, forums, and workshops
can solve your time-to-knowledge
headaches by giving you access to critical
information from industry leaders in international
venues.
The topics are focused on providing cost-effective
solutions to meet your time-to-market
and performance goals.
For more information or to register for
workshops, visit www.xilinx.com/pw2003/workshop/.
Like the forum presentations, the first
Programmable World workshop in San Jose
will be available in the last quarter of 2003 as
a video-on-demand.
Locations and Dates
The schedule for Programmable World 2003
workshops this year is:
The schedule for Programmable World 2003
workshops this year is:
| September 2003 | |
| San Jose, CA: | September 3 |
| Woodland Hills, CA: | September 4 |
| San Diego, CA: | September 5 |
| Stuttgart, Germany: | September 9 |
| Munich, Germany: | September 10 |
| Stockholm, Sweden: | September 11 |
| Helsinki, Finland: | September 12 |
| Madrid, Spain: | September 15 |
| Paris, France: | September 16 |
| Eindhoven, Netherlands: | September 17 |
| Leuven, Belgium: | September 18 |
| Boston, MA: | September 19 |
| Ottawa, Canada: | September 22 |
| Toronto, Canada: | September 24 |
| Dallas, TX: | September 25 |
| Chicago, IL: | September 26 |
| October 2003 | |
| Shanghai, China: | October 20 |
| Hsinchu, Taiwan: | October 22 |
| Seoul, Korea: | October 24 |
| November 2003 | |
| Tokyo, Japan: | November 14 |
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