ICS-8550 Rugged ADC XMC Module Delivers Performance, Flexibility

Combines power of XMC and Virtex-4 FPGA Responding to customer demand for higher sampling frequencies, higher performance and greater flexibility, ICS Sensor Processing – part of Radstone Embedded Computing – today announced the ICS-8550 ADC XMC module.  Designed for high speed data acquisition applications such as Software Defined Radio, SIGINT, tactical communications and radar, the ICS-8550 – which is available for both benign and rugged environments – can simultaneously sample two RF/IF inputs at frequencies up to 210 MHz at a resolution of 12 bits without data loss:  total aggregate I/O bandwidth is 12.5 Gbits/second.  The XMC interface makes the ICS-8550 an ideal partner for XMC-equipped single board computers such as Radstone’s V4DSP Hybrid FPGA/PowerPC processor (also announced today).  Onboard processing is provided by a Xilinx Virtex-4 FX60 FPGA, enabling algorithms such as digital downconversion (wide- or narrowband), FFT and filtering to be executed at the highest speed possible. “The ICS-8550 really pushes the performance boundaries in applications such as Software Defined Radio, and is a further demonstration of our leadership in rugged signal conversion applications,” said Scott Hames, Director of Product Management at ICS Sensor Processing.  “The combination of eight lanes of high speed serial I/O via the XMC connector, state of the art analog to digital conversion and the power and flexibility of the Virtex-4 gives us a solution which is unmatched in the industry.” Analog to digital conversion is provided by two Analog Devices AD9430 converters, while the onboard Xilinx Virtex-4 means that IF/UHF signals can be processed directly on the ICS-8550 board itself, freeing the host board for other tasks.  Some 95% of the Virtex-4’s resources are available for user applications.  As well as the high-speed serial connection offered by the XMC interface – which, dependent on the protocols used, could give throughput in excess of 1 GByte/second – the ICS-8550 features a 64/66 PCI interface supporting sustained aggregate data rates in excess of 400 MBytes/second.  The Pn4 I/O port allows the user to define direct point to point communications, eliminating interrupt latencies. ICS also provides a complete hardware development kit for the Xilinx ISE Foundation development environment, together with drivers for VxWorks, Linux and Windows.   For more information please visit www.ics-ltd.com.