Wireless, aerospace and defense, instrumentation and medical imaging applications continue to demand greater performance to support standards, while high-level design flows continue to improve to provide an easier entry point for using FPGAs for DSP. The Xilinx® Spartan®-6 FPGA DSP Kit brings development tools, methodologies, IP and support together into solutions that accelerate development for experienced users and simplifies the adoption of FPGAs for new users. By combining the pieces of a total solution, users can focus on the unique value of a design at the beginning of the design process.

With the introduction of the Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA DSP Kit, Avnet Electronics Marketing is offering its first domain-specific targeted design platform. The kit includes the Xilinx LX150T board and allows users to quickly learn the different tool flows and design techniques involved in creating DSP centric designs with the Spartan-6 FPGA family. Two example designs, both showing the implementation of a WCDMA digital up converter / digital down converter using hardware overclocking and time division multiplexing, are provided with the kit. For algorithm developers, a familiar DSP design flow is provided based on Simulink® and MATLAB®  from The Mathworks that allows the creation of FPGA hardware without the need to learn RTL. Traditional RTL design methodologies are also supported through a design implementation that uses ISE Design Suite: Logic Edition and LogicCore DSP IP.