February 16, 2006 -- Xilinx, Inc. has announced a collaboration with Xylon, supplier of logicBRICKS optimized IP cores, resulting in a programmable development board designed specifically for the automotive infotainment market. The logiCRAFT2 system, enabled by Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGAs, was demonstrated at Embedded World, February 14 to 18.

Capable of driving up to three displays (one front navigation and two rear seat), the logiCRAFT2 system can simultaneously display different video streams on each screen. This capability is enabled by the gate-density, logic performance and high-bandwidth provided by the Xilinx Spartan-3 FPGA family and the flexibility of the Xilinx MicroBlaze 32-bit soft processor. Potential video applications include game consoles, digital TVs, DVD players, and external cameras. The board supports a wide variety of video input and output standards including LVDS, CMOS, RGB digital and analogue, COG and CVBS. With a number of onboard PHYs selected for automotive interfacing, the board provides an ideal platform for evaluating the latest automotive and telematics IP cores.

Many automotive designs have limited success because they rely on ASSP devices that are prone to obsolescence. The Xilinx Spartan-3 family was selected for this project due to the high level of integration possible in the FPGA (up to 1.5 million gates) and the longevity of the Spartan-3 devices in the marketplace. The reconfigurable nature of Xilinx FPGAs allows designers to make changes up until the final stage of implementation, and the designs are easily migrated into future generations of products. This not only provides designers with more design flexibility, it also reduces total project cost over the life of the product.

"Our goal is to provide an optimal automotive Spartan-3 centric demonstration and development platform - logiCRAFT2 is targeted to both OEMs and Tier 1 customers for either advanced development or product development groups," said Davor Kovacec, Xylon CEO. "logiCRAFT2 demonstrates modularity on all levels: software, board, FPGA and IP core, which provides the customers with additional flexibility, faster development cycles, and lower development and production cost."

Although aimed at the automotive infotainment sector, the FPGA-based design can be easily adapted to suit many display interface applications such as those used in the consumer, media and industrial fields. Because it is based on programmable logic, it's a simple task to add features or capabilities to the logiCRAFT2 hardware with zero NRE costs. This type of flexibility is not possible with ASSP-based solutions.

The logiCRAFT2 system offers both Basic and Elite Packages. The Basic package contains the PCB, CD with user documentation, PCB schematics, logicBRICKS evaluation IP cores, the FPGA design and sample infotainment application software including an evaluation version of the used Graphic Library. The Elite package includes a complete infotainment development environment with two 800x480 rear seat displays, one 400x234 navigation COG display, a rear seat camera, infrared headphones, remote control, portable DVD player, Games Console MP3 player and loudspeakers.

Pricing and Availability

The price for the basic logiCRAFT2 package is listed at 1950 Euro. Pricing for the Elite system is available by request only.