HSMC & FMC connectivity options facilitating deployment into FPGA-based designs
To encourage the widespread utilisation of its cost-effective and easy-to-implement next generation USB interfacing technology, FTDI Chip has unveiled a new family of evaluation/development modules. The company’s FT600/1Q USB 3.0 SuperSpeed ICs, which are already in full volume production, are forthwith backed up by the UMFT60XX offering. This module family is made of 4 models, which provide different FIFO bus interfaces and data bit widths. Through these modules operational parameters of FT600/1Q devices can be fully assessed and interfacing with external hardware undertaken, such as FPGA platforms from the industry’s leading suppliers.
Measuring 78.7 mm × 60 mm, the UMFT600A and UMFT601A each have a high speed mezzanine card (HSMC) interface with 16-bit and 32-bit wide FIFO buses respectively. The UMFT600X and UMFT601X have dimensions of 70 mm × 60 mm and incorporate field-programmable mezzanine card (FMC) connectors, again with 16-bit and 32-bit wide FIFO buses respectively. The HSMC interface is compatible with most Altera FPGA reference design boards, while the FMC connector delivers the same functionality in relation to Xilinx boards.
Fully compatible with USB 3.0 SuperSpeed (5 Gbits/s), USB 2.0 High Speed (480 Mbits/s) and USB 2.0 Full Speed (12 Mbits/s) data transfer, the UMFT60xx modules support 2 parallel slave FIFO bus protocols with an achievable data burst rate of around 400MBytes/s. The multi-channel FIFO mode can handle up to 4 logic channels. It is complemented by the 245 synchronous FIFO mode, which is optimised for more straightforward operation.
