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Xilinx's latest design kit, based on Spartan-3A DSP FPGA, is intended to provide a development platform for cost-effective video applications including in-car diver systems, multimedia and portable ultrasound systems.

According to Dean Westman, v-p of marketing in the processor group at Xilinx, video systems that target FPGA-based designs will tend to include a combination of both DSP and embedded processing. “We now provide a tool flow that integrates these two domains by automatically generating the hardware and software interfaces for the user," said Westman.

"This tool flow is included in the kit along with a set of reference designs,” added Westman.

Pre-verified video specific intellectual property (IP) whioch is offered with the starter kit includes a video frame buffer controller, along with reference designs, various software drivers, and hardware interface support for the various I/O interfaces. 

The XtremeDSP video starter kit includes the Spartan-3A DSP FPGA development board, cables, VGA camera and FMC-video I/O module that supports DVI input, single channel in and out composite, S-video in and out, and dual camera interfaces.

Development tools include System Generator for DSP which supports the use of The Mathworks Simulink and MATLAB modeling environment for FPGA design. It al.so comes with the company's embedded development software suite which includes various embedded IP cores and the MicroBlaze embedded processor. 

Some video processing applications such as surveillance and in-car systems have now moved beyond the capabilities of a traditional DSP processor. One apporach is to off-load some of the more complex image or video procesing to an FPGA. The other approach is to use a dedicated video processor.