The QuiXilica V5 Architecture is the basis for a variety of digitizer boards in multiple form factors. The QuiXilica V5 Family of ADC and DAC solutions use three Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs on each board to provide maximum high bandwidth processing and system configuration flexibility. Each FPGA has access to two banks of DDR3 SDRAM of 512 MB each (1 GB total per FPGA). The QuiXilica V5 Architecture products will support 2 GB and 4 GB per FPGA when larger memory devices are available for increased storage density and increased memory bandwidth. Memory and FPGAs have been combined and interconnected using multiple high bandwidth parallel and high-speed serial interconnections; thus data can be available within the processing chain as needed to meet a wide range of application requirements.

Inter-board and system communication requirements are met using either backplane connections or multiple front-panel high speed serial Quad Small Form-Factor Pluggable (QSFP) and Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFP+) modules which provide eight and six high speed serial links respectively operating at up to 6.5 Gb/s. Utilizing the embedded communication functions as well as Tekmicro’s QuiXilica core and software library support (QuiXtream), the QuiXilica V5 Family supports the latest generation of Open Standard I/O protocols such as Gigabit Ethernet, Serial FPDP (ANSI VITA 17.1 & 17.2), PCI Express, Xilinx Aurora and Fibre Channel.

In addition to providing high performance, QuiXilica V5 digitizers have been designed for ruggedization and power management. The DDR3 SDRAM uses 17% less power than DDR2. QuiXilica V5 boards operate effectively in laboratory, rugged air-cooled, and rugged conduction-cooled environments to meet the needs of deployed applications.

TEK Microsystems provides superior QuiXilica FPGA cores and supporting firmware to minimize the effort required to extract maximum performance from the architecture, and to make development as easy as possible.

The Architecture’s common hardware interfaces and firmware /software development tools allow the user to easily migrate between platforms as different systems are developed, protecting the user’s investment both in their FPGA application and in integration and qualification of the QuiXilica V5 products in the target application.

The QuiXilica V5 Architecture provides a simple flexible parallel interface that enables boards to be factory configured with different ADCs and DACs, thus enabling the boards to meet a robust variety of applications. High bandwidth support for ADCs and DACs operating beyond 4 GSPS is designed into the architecture.

The complexities of FPGA development presents some tough challenges in terms of system monitoring, managing the power supply and heat dissipation. Tekmicro provides software tools to allow users to analyze and experiment with the requirements of their design and the associated impact on power supply requirements. A comprehensive System Health Monitoring facility continuously tracks temperature and supplies current at a number of key points in the system.

Summary

The scalable, configurable QuiXilica V5 Architecture has been designed using the latest FPGA based processing, memory, and communications technologies available. Full ruggedization has been designed into the architecture from the outset, offering availability of products for use in harsh demanding environments for deployed systems.

To see the entire QuiXilica product line of both V-5 and V-II pro versions, go to Digitizers At A Glance.

Virtex-5 ADC and DAC solutions are listed below.