Xilinx delivers Spartan-3AN Starter Kit for rapid evaluation of consumer and industrial applications

Xilinx, Inc., the world’s leading supplier of programmable solutions, has announced immediate availability of its low-cost Spartan™-3AN Starter Kit, ideal for prototyping high-volume non-volatile applications where higher system integration or security is critical such as broadband access, digital displays, set top boxes, data acquisition and low-power mobile and handheld devices.

“Our Spartan-3 generation provides users the most flexible, reliable and cost-effective solution for space-sensitive applications requiring non-volatile single-chip solutions,” said Harry Raftopoulos, director of marketing & applications for the general products division at Xilinx. “The out-of-the-box functionality of the Spartan-3AN Starter Kit supports our goal to provide customers a low-cost and easy to use environment.”

Out-of-the-box guarantee
The kit provides out-of-the-box functionality with the necessary hardware, software tools, evaluation board, power supply, reference designs and accessories to get users up and running in minutes. Designers can take advantage of the robust IP security schemes of Spartan-3AN devices which include on-chip DeviceDNA, a production-stamped, unique identifier for anti-cloning; largest on-chip user flash with up to 11Mb for safekeeping critical code and JTAG lockdown to prevent backdoor access to the FPGA.

The evaluation board features a 700K system gate FPGA, and is fully equipped with subsystems such as 10/100 Ethernet PHY, 64Mbytes DDR2 SDRAM, two 16Mbit serial flash, ADC and DAC circuitry, a 2x16 LCD display for debugging, various switches, a rotary knob, and expansion headers.

About Spartan-3AN FPGAs
Xilinx Spartan-3AN devices, available in five non-volatile device options, provide the ideal programmable platform for countless applications supporting up to 26 differential and single-ended I/O standards such as LVDS, TMDS, RSDS, PPDS, mini-LVDS, DDR2 memory interface, and more. Configurations range from 50K to 1.4M system gates with up to 576Kb block RAM, 11Mb available user flash, and up to 502 I/Os supporting 26 popular I/O protocol standards, In addition, unique FPGA capabilities such as digital clock managers (DCMs), multipliers, and low power modes make these devices ideal for bridging, memory interfacing, digital signal co-processing and embedded control applications. All devices are pin-compatible with Spartan-3A FPGAs.

Xilinx