Zynq™-7000 AP SoC is a new class of product which combines an industry-standard ARM® dual-core Cortex™-A9 MPCore™ processing system with Xilinx 28nm programmable logic. This processor-centric architecture delivers a comprehensive processing platform that offers developers ASIC levels of performance and power consumption, the ease of programmability of a microprocessor and the flexibility of a FPGA.
Xilinx University Program is offering a Zynq-based community board, ZedBoard, at affordable price with several well-known interfaces that can be accessed through the processing system and programmable logic. Academic users can use the board for teaching, research, and development in areas of computer architecture, operating system development, embedded processing systems, and hardware-software co-design, to name a few. Users can build and include hardware accelerators to meet bandwidth demanding applications. The combination of industry leading ARM processors and programmable logic lends itself to innovative, yet practical, applications in education.