DSP Platform Offers High Performance At Reduced Power, Cost

The Spartan-DSP platform of reconfigurable DSP chips from Xilinx Inc. delivers high performance at reduced power and cost for wireless, video, and consumer applications. The Spartan-DSP platform expands the company’s XtremeDSP silicon portfolio of DSP solutions. The Spartan-3ADSP family is the first platform in the Spartan-DSP series, featuring the 3SD3400A device, which delivers over 30 GMACS and 2200-Gbits/s memory bandwidth, and the 3SD1800A device, with over 20 GMACS and 1500-Gbits/s memory.

At the heart of the Spartan-3ADSP architecture is the new cost-optimized XtremeDSP slice (DSP48A), which allows designers to implement many independent arithmetic functions. The architecture also supports connecting multiple DSP48A slices to form wide math functions, DSP filters, and complex arithmetic functions without the use of general logic fabric. The result is 50&37; less dynamic power consumption than other high-performance reconfigurable devices for DSP functions at this performance point. In addition to the XtremeDSP DSP48A slice, the Spartan-3A delivers up to 53,712 logic cells, 2268 kbits of performance-enhanced Block RAM (BRAM), and 373 kbits of distributed RAM that collectively can be configured to optimize a broad range of signal-processing requirements.