PHY/FPGA Duo Provides Low-Cost PCI Express Platform

Pairing the PX1011A PCI Express PHY from Royal Philips Electronics with a Xilinx Spartan-3 XC3S1200E FPGA yields what is unveiled as the first low-cost, programmable PCI Express endpoint silicon solution. The PHY provides the serializer/deserializer and physical coding sub-layer. It is said to consume little power and features a small form factor, making it suitable for use in ExpressCard applications. The 90-nm Spartan-3 FPGA integrates a combination of block and distributed RAM, up to 784 I/Os, MicroBlaze 32-bit RISC soft processors, and XtremeDSP functionality with dedicated 18 x 18 multipliers that deliver up to 330 billion multiply and accumulates (MACs) per second. Available in June, the PX1011A is priced at less than $5.50 in high volumes. The XC3S1200E is available for under $9 each in high volume. ROYAL PHILIPS ELECTRONICS, San Jose, CA. (408) 617-4700. XILINX INC., San Jose, CA.(408) 559-7778.