Xilinx Launches New Virtex-5 FPGA IP for CPRI and OBSAI Standards

(Product News, 18 Sep 2007)

Xilinx Inc. has launched two high performance wireless connectivity LogiCORE solutions optimized for Xilinx 65nm Virtex-5 LXT and SXT FPGAs, compliant with CPRI v2.1 and OBSAI RP3 and RP3-01 v4.0 connectivity standards. The new LogiCORE solutions enable wireless OEMs to leverage these industry-leading connectivity standards to drive down wireless base station design costs and power requirements, while allowing the interface to be easily adapted to their own specific requirements, or modified to support updates in the standard.

Xilinx is the first in the industry to support the OBSAI RP3 & RP3-01 v4.0 standard with its latest 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) extensions. Building on a track record of proven reference designs already deployed in a number of commercial base station and radio-head applications, the new cores provide a simple, low-risk, cost-effective way of building compliant radio cards, channel cards, and wireless test equipment.

The LogiCORE solutions include all necessary source-code VHDL files, data sheets, and test suites designed to meet the CPRI v2.1 and OBSAI RP3 and RP3-01 v4.0 specifications. Also included are constraints and design files for implementing on the Xilinx ML505 and ML506 development boards, available as part of the Virtex-5 FPGA family, the industry's only high-performance 65nm FPGA in production. Xilinx Virtex-5 LXT and SXT FPGAs, with low power (100mW at 3.2Gbps) Xilinx RocketIO GTP transceivers, provide wireless designers with significant power savings of up to 77 percent in comparison to existing transceiver implementations.

"As a leading independent provider of remote radio equipment, compatibility with all leading connectivity standards is critical. The flexibility of Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs has allowed our design team to integrate the CPRI and OBSAI standards, resulting in increased radio performance as well as cost and power savings," said Steve Cooper, CTO of AXIS Network Technology. "We've tested Xilinx LogiCORE solutions in a variety of equipment with OBSAI and CPRI connectivity, and have found each of them to be fully interoperable. The recently released Axis CDRS-C2 digital radio platform now supports these LogiCORE solutions."

"The industry's migration to standards-based serial connectivity solutions and a rapidly changing roadmap are presenting new challenges to wireless semiconductor solution providers," said Ron DiGiuseppe, Senior Marketing Manager, Advanced Connectivity & Networking, Processing Solutions Group at Xilinx. "Xilinx solutions offer a flexible, cost-effective alternative to traditional ASIC solutions, significantly reducing CAPEX and OPEX costs through faster time-to-market, zero NRE costs, and field upgradeability."

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