Example Custom Designs

MPC8548E + Virtex-5

Our customer came to us after seeing the XPedite5200.  After the successful evaluation and customer support experience, the customer asked us to develop a custom MPC8548E design based on the XPedite5200.  They chose us based on our proven design experience with the MPC8548E and Xilinx FPGAs.  During an on-site meeting we sketched out a block diagram of the system and kicked off the project. The concept was to:

• Expand form factor from PMC/XMC to a custom form factor
• Reduce overall power consumption for the system by removing unneeded parts
• Add support for hosting 2 XMC/PMC modules and 1 custom daughtercard
• Add Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA connected to CPU; the FPGA subsystem includes PCI Express, DDR2, and custom logic interfaces
• Add ability to program FPGA from CPU during operation
• Add USB host support and three USB ports
• Redesign power supplies to to allow unit to be powered from an external "laptop" style power supply brick
• Add Li-Ion battery charger / manager and Li-Ion battery to power unit when power supply is disconnected
• Thermal design and testing to support operation at 55°C in a natural convection environment
• Add support for real-time Linux and software support for additional functionality

An X-ES design engineer worked closely with the customer's team to expand our block diagram specification into a full design spec in the next week and worked closely with the team through the design process, meeting weekly or more to discuss project status and scheduling.  Due to its custom nature, several test fixtures were created to test the functionality of the custom daughtercard module interfaces and test ports as well as to provide power to the unit.  In addition, we worked closely with the customer's mechanical design team to help develop, model, simulate, and verify the chassis that the product would be housed in and which acts as the heatsink for the unit.  After prototype verification by X-ES and the customer, production boards were produced and they went into successful production use with several customers.

FPGA XMC

This XMC module based off the MPC8458E + Virtex-5 design and conceived alongside that design.  The concept was to take the FPGA subsection of the previous board and make it into an XMC module.  This was a very straight-forward design, with minor changes required to the power supplies and using extensive design re-use from the orignal board.

This XMC module allows for the base board to be easily expanded to suit customers needs.  If more I/O or FPGA resources are needed, up to 2 more XMC modules can be added allowing one, two, or three daughtercard modules to be supported.  Since they are identical in design to the base card, this allowed streamlining and reuse of the FPGA IP and supporting software. 

This product was developed in parallel to the MPC8548E + Virtex-5 production boards, and both the base board and this XMC module went into production at the same time.

440GX + FPGA

The customer approached us for a custom design based on the IBM 440GX (now AMCC) processor. Their application was a camera controller and image processing application, where this card would control a new CCD chip that the customer had designed. The program had national security uses so some applications were classified, but one example was that the camera could take very high resolution accurate images of very bright short lived events.  The camera controller allows the camera to take the high resolution images of the really bright events by monitoring the CCD bits to make sure they never reach their maximum charge. As the CCD bits approach their maximum charge they are read out and stored and at the end of the exposure time these multiple readings are summed for each bit to get the intensity of light seen by each bit. In this way, the CCD can get accurate images of very bright light where other cameras would lose information as the CCD reached its maximum charge.

The design was to create a custom carrier module with a camera controller would be connected to the actual camera/CCD moduleto carry a standard XPedite1000 440GX PMC which would do the image processing and . The major difficulties of the design were:

• High data rates - When the camera is active it pushes a continuous stream of data that must be buffered and sent to the XPedite1000 for processing; the stream cannot be interrupted
• Existing PCI interface IPs were not up to the task for the throughput needed, X-ES needed to design their own interface tailored to high throughput
• Camera data needed to be buffered in the FPGA before being sent out, required DDR SDRAM for size/speed; X-ES designed a DDR memory controller for the FPGA
• Data needed to be streamed to XPedite1000.  DMA controller IP was developed to push the data continuously and to handle scatter/gather for improved performance
• Camera control logic was custom and had never been done by X-ES before, worked closely with the customer to develop design
• Unique power input voltage, powered from a 6V power input

The carrier module supplied power to the PMC module and interfaced with the camera module.  It also contained an FPGA which was designed by X-ES to control the custom logic needed to read the CCD and to push the data at high speed to a PCI interface and to the XPedite1000 for processing and output over gigabit Ethernet.

X-ES designed a large amount of FPGA IP for this design including a custom PCI interface, a DDR interface, as well as high speed buffers and a DMA controller. The FPGA design was complex and difficult because of the very high throughput design requirements and the difficulty of the logic design. We worked closely with the customer throughout the design and IP development. Testing of the end product was complicated by the fact that X-ES was not allowed to be shipped a camera, but a test plan was drawn up with the customer and they tested most of the camera interface with our help. This complicated the debug, but we were able to deliver working prototypes and with a few tweaks to the design we delivered production boards for the customer to deploy.

Multi-FPGA

This project involved a customer that required a PMC primarily consisting of three Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGAs and DDR2 SDRAM. One FPGA was required to bridge between PCI-X and buses to the other two FPGAs which would receive and process optical data.

X-ES worked closely with the customer to provide the production firmware for the PCI-X FPGA. The customer developed the production firmware for the other two FPGAs and X-ES developed and provided diagnostic firmware for the other FPGAs for design verification and testing.

Custom Form Factor

The XAct1007 is a custom form factor design to fit in the existing system the customer has deployed. It is based on XPedite5200 CPU system. The initial design was simply a form factor design change. The customer then asked for two additional changes. First they wanted to add customer-specific serial I/O. Next, they want to add high-speed serial and interconnect. The two customer-driven revisions were done after the initial build, during the course of the product.

The serial I/O involved an FPGA design; X-ES provided an FPGA design to which the customer added their own encryption algorithm. The FPGA design included a "pass-through" encryption module. The customer simply had to replace the pass-through with their encryption logic. X-ES also supplied test software that input data on the serial interface from a customer supplied simulator to verify and validate the FPGA design. The test software was also used as a framework by the customer to aid in their software development to ease the burden on the learning curve of interfacing with the FPGA's register set.

X-ES was able to address the dynamic requirements on this project throughout its life cycle. Starting from a low speed FPGA with PCI as the interconnect, the customer realized that design would require higher serial speeds. X-ES added an Aurora high speed serial interface to meet the customer's needs. PCI would not be able to keep up with Aruora's data rates, and therefore, a PCI Express path was added to provide reserve bandwidth for the future. After the PCIe interface was added, a third requirement was added to support multiple I2S audio interfaces.  While doing all this, the customer also required a transition card in order to utilize this module on a older form factor and contracted X-ES to design and test the transition card. The customer supplied the hosting module and X-ES tested the transition module with XAct1007 mounted on it.

X-ES was able to meet the dynamic customer needs throughout the design phase and keep ahead of their schedule during the entire process and add additional pieces wherever they were necessary.

BCM1125 + Security CoProcessor

The WG1150 is based on XPedite3000's BCM1125 CPU system, but the similarities of the designs stop there. The WG1150 incorporates a security coprocessor, a Gigabit Ethernet switch, and Power Over Ethernet in a custom form factor based on ATX. The purpose of WG1150 was to upgrade the CPU as well as Ethernet to use Gigabit instead of Fast Ethernet. The WG1150 was on an aggressive 12 week schedule from project start to prototype delivery. An initial meeting was held at the customer's site to discuss the requirements, schedule and technical details. This was X-ES's first design with PoE (Power over Ethernet) as well as a security coprocessor.

From the customer supplied block diagram, we created the design to provide the following functions:

• Soft Off Power Control to allow the power button to have software perform a clean shutdown
• Hot swap control for 48V power used for PoE
• PCI bus based security coprocessor
• 8 Port Gigabit Ethernet switch which included CPU GMII conversion to RGMII
• PoE design across 4 Gigabit Ethernet ports
• Layout design to fit the form factor of their enclosure
• Thermal design to meet customer supplied enclosures requirements

Functional prototypes were delivered to the customer on time.  X-ES provided the production design to the customer for them to manufacture.