CoreDDR Controller, Optimized for Actel FPGAs, Provides Synchronous Interface to Standard SDRAM Devices
November 15, 2004 - Actel Corporation announced a new intellectual property (IP) core optimized for Actel field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) that provides a high-performance, synchronous interface to double data rate (DDR) SDRAM memories. The new Actel CoreDDR supports up to 1024 Mbytes of memory with a fully pipelined architecture that enables extremely fast data rates for consumer, communication, industrial and military applications. In addition, the memory controller can be customized based on system and memory-specific requirements, allowing the designer to maximize memory bandwidth and overall system performance.CoreDDR is part of the growing family of memory control solutions available from Actel that also includes the CoreSDR controller for single data rate SDRAM memories. The new CoreDDR controller, which is optimized for Actel's antifuse-based Axcelerator and RTAX-S FPGAs, supports standard SDRAM chips and dual in-line memory modules (DIMMs) with up to 1024 Mbytes of memory and up to eight chip selects. To simplify system design, the controller performs all initialization and refresh functions for the SDRAM memories.
The core accepts read and write commands using the simple local bus interface and translates these requests to the command sequences required by the SDRAM devices. The local bus interface also allows CoreDDR to be easily connected and used with Actel's CorePCIX solution in PCI applications. The core supports cascading of read and write requests, enabling up to 100 percent throughput, maximizing SDRAM bandwidth and overall system performance. To further increase performance, the CoreDDR controller's bank management logic monitors the status of up to four SDRAM banks to minimize access delays.
Pricing and Availability
Netlist and RTL source versions of Actel's CoreDDR, with a comprehensive test bench, are available now. The netlist version simplifies system integration while the RTL version allows full user customization. Pricing starts at $4,000. In addition, a free evaluation version is available for download at Actel's Web site, www.actel.com/products/ip.
