Xilinx Drives New Families to Auto Market.

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Author: Davis, Jessica

Programmable logic company Xilinx is expanding its portfolio of products for the automotive industry, adding the low-cost Spartan 3E family and the high performance Virtex-4 platform FPGA device.

The company made the announcement today at the International Automotive Electronics Congress in Paris, saying the Spartan family, now qualified for automotive maker requirements, represents the lowest cost FPGA available today for automotive at $3 per device.

The devices meet auto industry requirements such as ISO TS16949 certification, AEC-Q100 qualification flow, and PPAP documentation process, Xilinx representatives said. And the devices are being used for a range of applications within today's cars

"Our Virtex-4 platform with integrated DSP and integrated PowerPC are being used heavily in central gateway types of applications" that link the various networks that exist in a car, said David Gamba, senior marketing manager for automotive. At the other end of the spectrum, the Spartan 3E family is getting used for driver assistance applications such as cruise control and night vision, he said.

The Spartan 3E is a lower cost version of Spartan 3, according to Kevin Tanaka, manager of automotive marketing and product planning. "We are getting at price points so we can compete directly against ASICs and some of the microcontrollers out there," he said.

And while the silicon is the same as the regular Spartan 3 and Virtex-4 families, these new families for automotive are subjected to the rigorous qualifications required by the auto industry.

"We've taken these parts and run them through stress qualifications for automotive, including high temperatures," said Tanaka. "We didn't have to make changes to them."

Using FPGAs instead of ASICs or microcontrollers is a relatively new trend for automotive companies, Gamba said.

"This flexible hardware is new to them, but it's something they are benefiting from," he said.

For example, he said, Virtex-4 has been picked up by a European automaker for its central gateway.

"As we see more electronics come into vehicles, we are finding areas where FPGAs fit perfectly," Gamba said.

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By Jessica Davis